


Only the Courageous

by eyres



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comic Book Science, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Science Nerd Bucky Barnes, Steve still becomes Captain America though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-05-02 18:35:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14550837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyres/pseuds/eyres
Summary: A few years after the Chitauri attacked New York, Dr. James Barnes is on the brink of recreating Erskine's serum when his husband, a special ops captain, is injured in a covert mission. Forced to choose between his career and saving Steve's life, Bucky creates the world's first superhero.Unfortunately, Hydra had been waiting for him to do just that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been a long time in coming! I have about 68k written but I've been agonizing over the last 10-15k so I figured, if I started posting, I could jump start my muse. The good news is that updates will be fairly regular :)

###  _Prologue_

They get married in the courthouse closest to the hospital. It’s a day where the rain never stops coming down and the puddles pile up and overflow down greasy streets.

The marriage license has been sitting on Steve's old desk for almost two months. It's a little creased and water stained, battered. They'd gotten it back in January when the doctors had still been hopeful about Sarah’s diagnosis, back when they were still saying things like, "this is a fight you can win, Mrs. Rogers."

Sarah had smiled when she'd seen it, so thin even then, and immediately started planning their wedding and honeymoon in Cancun or Barbados or Hawaii. "Somewhere warm," she'd said, blue eyes that were so much like Steve's cutting to the ice covering her bedroom window. "Over your spring break - a little pre graduation present from me. I'll be done with chemo by then and I have a lovely swimsuit I want to wear."

Steve had laughed and Bucky had gripped her hand. She was all the parent they had left. Steve's dad died in Desert Storm and Bucky's parents had died when he was 20 in a car wreck. Sarah was it.

She'd gone to the hospital a week later with pneumonia. Steve had tried to drop all of his classes at NYU, even though it would mean delaying his graduation at least a semester until Sarah had cried herself into a coughing fit. The compromise was a lightened load so Steve could still walk in May and make up two classes over the summer.

Steve had spent every moment not at school with Sarah, bent over her. She'd been a nurse at this very hospital and Steve had sweet-talked his way into sitting with her almost round the clock. Bucky brought his pre-med books to her room and studied quietly in the corner while Sarah went from bad to worse to comatose. He’d felt helpless in the face of her decline, watching the two people left alive in the world who he loved most suffer. It broke his heart in ways that he knew he would never recover from.

In that quiet room, he'd stared down at his books on anatomy and biology and felt rage at his own inability. He wasn't even officially a med student yet. There was nothing he could do but wring his hands.

Sarah died in the night, just before spring would break over New York. Her heart gave out while Bucky was catching a few hours of sleep at home before a midterm and he’d come back to Steve, curled in the waiting room chair like he wasn't six feet tall. He had been pale and his eyes were dry and he’d clung to Bucky like a drowning man.

"I don't know what to do," Steve said. So Bucky did his best. He sent Steve home to change his clothes and shower and started filling out the endless forms the hospital needed, his own chest hurting like a heart attack.

He was on the last form, words blurring and pulsing like a living thing, when he'd heard determined footsteps approaching.

Steve was there, striding toward him in his best suit, the one he'd gotten for the funeral of Bucky's parents. It’s just a little small now, pants ending a bit higher on his ankles than they should. He'd combed his hair and he was holding the marriage license in one hand, face set like he was about to fight.

There, in the hospital corridor, in front of the nurse's station, he went to one knee, even though Bucky had been the one to propose to him months ago. "Marry me. I know this isn't what we'd planned, Buck," he'd said, voice a little loud so he could be heard over the loudspeaker. "But, marry me today. Please." His eyes were shining, tears and fierce determination. His skin was flushed like he'd run all the way up just for this moment.

Bucky couldn't stop his hands from shaking as he said yes.

By the time they get to the courthouse, Steve's hair is plastered across his forehead and Bucky can feel water soaked through his sweatshirt to his t-shirt beneath. Neither one of them can stop shivering and Bucky doesn't know if it's the cold or nerves.

Steve insists they dry off a little in the bathroom, using paper towels and the hand drier. He's just a little taller than Bucky now (after being shorter all through their childhood) and he kisses his forehead as he soaks up the water from his hair. "I love you," he says under the glaring bathroom lights.

The words make a sob form and bubble up Bucky's throat and he stuffs his own fist in his mouth to squelch the noise. A few tears come out, mingling with the cold rain on his cheeks.

"Hey, hey." Steve wraps his arms around him, holding him close so that the rainwater heats up between them. "We don't have to do this. We can wait."

"No - I'm okay." Bucky takes a deep breath and leans into Steve's resolve, depending on Steve's heart to know the right thing just as he's done his whole life. Steve is a force of nature. "There's nothing I want more."

They appear before the judge, hand in hand, and kiss even before the judge finishes the ceremony. Steve presses too hard, lips dry, like he's trying to keep Bucky present in the poorly lit room - afraid that Bucky is going to leave him too.

Both of them smell like a hospital and Bucky's eyes are blurry and painful from the tamped down tears, but they're both smiling when they walk back into the court lobby. It's mostly empty and smells of the downpour and street oil. There’s so much to do. Sarah’s funeral needs to be planned and her medicines still sit on the counter. The real world is just feet away, but this moment is theirs.

"I said, I do, right?" Steve asks, sounding a little dazed.

"Yep, pal, you did. No take backs," Bucky says, something like joy fizzing in his stomach.

Steve pauses, staring out at the rain. "Thank you, Buck," he says. "For marrying me.”

Bucky smiles. Outside, the clouds are heavy but Bucky can feel the sun in his own chest, bright warm and glowing.

It feels like a happy ending.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kudos and comments and subscriptions :) they mean the world!

**Part I**

###  _Bucky_

In an elegantly decorated faculty dining room, Bucky Barnes fidgets with his tie near the punch bowl and tries to pay attention to the small talk of well wishers around him. Steve is supposed to be here. He checks his phone again, trying to be subtle while his Dean is laughing jovially at some joke.

Nothing. No texts. No missed calls. No emails.

Bucky scratches uncomfortably at the fitted suit he’d bought specifically for this occasion. He’d admired himself in their floor length mirror before he left the house a few hours ago - but now he’d give anything to be back in sweats and a tshirt. Anxiety is making the sweat pool at the small of his back. His hair, at least, is out of his face so can’t fidget with it, pulled back in a neat, tight bun that would make Steve bite at his neck if he was here. But, he’s not here.

Instead, Bucky is alone in this wide room currently set up for the reception in his honor. Professors, grad students, and staff are all in their formal black tie, milling around tall tables while straight backed waiters carry silver trays. Stringed musicians from the music school are playing softly in the corner, to the left of the empty microphone set up for Bucky to announce the $10 million grant to the Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology department, made by Stark Industries to fund his research.

Steve is supposed to be here. Steve had promised. Steve may have a job that takes him all over the world without a moment’s notice but Steve had promised him that he _would_ be here. He knows how important this is for Bucky’s career. He knows this is a big deal.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he’d said on the phone just four hours ago. Bucky replays his words over like a mantra in his head.

Bucky trusts Steve - that means that hell or high water wouldn’t be able to keep Steve away. Unless, something had gone terribly wrong.

What if the mission had gone badly after their earlier phone call? What if that’s why he’s not here? What if Steve is lying in the back of some field ambulance and he’s bleeding out and no one has thought to call Bucky yet? He tugs at his tie again, shifts from foot to foot, and wills his phone to ring.

He's about to give up, make an excuse to the people chatting around him and step outside and start calling people himself, when he feels a gentle hand press against the small of his back.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve’s voice is warm and soft, a breath off the shell of his ear.

Bucky turns and there he is. The air whooshes out of him, relief rushing over the annoyance and concern from before, the tide finally coming in from the sea. All he can see is the shine of Steve’s blonde hair under the lights, Steve’s warm, wide smile, and the tapered fit of his black suit. His blue eyes are red with tiredness but they’re shining with real happiness.

“Steve,” he says, proud of how steady his voice is. “You made it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” His husband presses a kiss to the side of Bucky’s head and then turns to the faculty that Bucky has been pretending to talk to for the last thirty minutes. “I’m so sorry I was late. I hope I didn’t miss anything. I’m Steve Rogers.” He stretches out his hand.

Bucky looks back at the faculty members and sees them all smiling widely. Steve, when he's trying to be charming, seems to have that affect on people and he’s clearly bringing out the big guns tonight by the width of his smile.

“Of course - Steve. Dr. Barnes has talked about you often,” Dean Peterson shakes Steve’s hand firmly. “You must be very proud of him.”

Steve steps back, slides his arm around Bucky’s waist and pulls him close. It’s a practiced move; but it doesn’t make it any less warm and comforting. “Very proud, sir. I’ve always been impressed by his work. He was always the smart one, even when we were kids.”

Dean Peterson nods. “We’re lucky to have him here.” He takes a sip of his wine and levels an assessing gaze at Steve that Bucky recognizes instantly. The next topic of conversation isn’t Bucky’s favorite, or Steve’s for that matter. “And what do you do, Steve?”

Steve’s hand flexes briefly on Bucky’s arm. “I work in logistical operations for SHIELD,” he says, voice perfectly dry and boring, like he’s describing a desk job. “It’s a lot of paperwork, honestly, coordinating supply shipments to our overseas bases.”

“It sounds safe,” interjected one of Bucky’s fellow professors. She has a warm face and she smiles kindly, like she’s trying to gloss over the fact that Steve isn’t nearly as accomplished as his husband. It makes Bucky grit his teeth a little. “I can imagine Bucky is glad he doesn’t have to worry about you much. I heard about those three soldiers who died in Pakistan last night. Terribly tragic.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to tighten his arm around Steve at the reminder of how close Steve does come to danger every single day. He feels stiffer fabric beneath the smooth suit coat. Bandages. He frowns. Something _had_ happened.

“The biggest danger I get into on a regular basis is paper cuts,” Steve says drily, smile unwavering, even though he's probably still bleeding beneath the thick bandages. He’s good at this: good at using this bland and mediocre front to hide his own laser sharp mind and impressive list of medals and accomplishments - the danger he puts himself in every time he goes into combat.

Everyone laughs obligingly and Bucky forces himself to relax. If it was bad, Steve wouldn’t be here, he tells himself. Steve is here, on his feet, smiling. Whatever it is, it’s not serious.

“Well, thank you for your service anyway,” Dean Peterson says, tilting his wine glass, even as he’s clearly dismissing Steve. “And, now, Dr. Barnes - I think it’s time we begin.” He gestures toward the microphone waiting at the front of the room.

Bucky pulls at his cuffs, pats at his hair, and clears his throat. He can do this, he reminds himself. This is something he knows forwards and backwards. It's his baby. He leans close to Steve for a moment. “You’re okay, right?” he says into his ear, turning his face from his colleagues.

Steve squeezes his shoulder in encouragement. “I’m fine, sweetheart, I promise,” he says quietly in return, breath warm and clean on Bucky’s face, like he’d just brushed his teeth in the car. He steps back. "Go on, Buck," he says a little louder so the group can hear him. "Knock 'em dead."

Bucky grins and nods. He walks carefully up to the microphone, edging around the smiles and well wishes from the gathered assembly. “Thank you all for coming,” he says into the mic. His eyes can the crowd, seeing the colleagues he’s worked with for years, who’ve supported him and encouraged him and pushed him to be better. He sees the people that aren’t here: his parents, Sarah. At the back, Steve stands with a red wine glass, smiling broadly. Bucky smiles back, feeling, as always, like he’s still a snotty nosed kid on a Brooklyn street and Steve is the brightest thing for miles. Without Steve, he wouldn’t be here at all.

He clears his throat. “As you all know, our lab, our whole department really, has been doing amazing work in biomedical research for the last several years. I’m pleased to announce that a team of our researchers,” he gestures, purposefully not mentioning that he’s the lead on the team, “were chosen for the Stark Industries Excellency in Innovation grant. We will be receiving funds totaling $10 million dollars to be used to get this idea to market.”

The applause echoes across the crowd and he smiles, nodding. He’s proud of this project.

“Our goal here is to improve lives. This research could provide the solution for curing diseases and conditions that were long thought incurable. It’s a deeply personal project to me - my partner, Steve Rogers, is a survivor of childhood cancer. He was in and out of ICUs all through our childhood. Then, his mother died from breast cancer when he was 21. I saw first hand how disease can strip away the humanity from people, how it can cut short beautiful lives. With this research, I hope that we’ll be able to give people back their lives and their health. So, thank you to my colleagues who’ve supported me. To the school and the Dean for believing in these projects and giving us the funding to get off the ground. To my parents, who though they can’t be here to share this, never stopped supporting me, even after they were gone. And, finally, to my husband, Steve, who has never doubted me for a single moment.”

Bucky ducks his head when the applause raises again. He stares at the deep red carpet under his black leather shoes. They’ll have to be here another hour at minimum, make the rounds of the faculty bigwigs and hobnob with the grad students who are desperate to get a slot in his lab. Steve will stay by his side through it all, looking wearier and wearier as the evening wears on - but he won’t complain or slouch. He is a soldier after all.

When they get home, Bucky will help him peel out of the suit and check the bandages. They'll curl into bed together and Bucky will get to hold his husband all night for the first time in weeks.

His mind is already there.

###  _Bucky_

Waking up with Steve in bed next to him is a rare treat and Bucky stretches, raises his bare arms above his head, smiling with his eyes still closed at the warm sunlight he can feel spread all across his face. His hair is tickling his face, barely dry from the shower he took last night, and Bucky knows it’s probably sticking up in every direction. He can smell Steve next to him, the minty aftershave and soap. On his foot, Bucky can feel a warm weight where their giant, dopey mutt of a dog is spread across the bottom of the bed.

The dog is Steve’s baby. The big sap had found the poor thing being harassed by some boys with sticks in some city overseas (“It’s classified, Buck. Sorry.” “You mean I can’t even know what nationality our dog is?”), half starved and covered in fleas and sores and wounds. He’d chased the boys off, picked it right up in his arms and carried him straight into SHIELD’s multi-million military jet. When they’d gotten back to US soil and the dog had been discovered, there had been hell to pay.

Steve was nothing, however, if not determined. One month, reams of paperwork, a truckload of dog shampoo, and thousands of dollars later, Bucky and Steve had added Toby to their little family. Steve adores the dog as if it was his own kid and Toby looks at Steve like he’s the sun, moon, and all of the stars. Bucky always thought he was more of a cat person - but Toby has grown on him.

When it comes down to it, Steve’s face lighting up when he plays with Toby? That’s worth the dog slobber, dog hair, and lugging 50 pound bags of dog food up the driveway every other week.

He rolls over and opens his eyes. Steve is sleeping on his back, arm tossed up over his eyes and mouth opened, army short blonde hair looking neat as ever. He always sleeps like the dead on the days where his team isn’t on call (except for extreme situations), like a toddler after a day at Disneyland. The depth of his sleep is almost sweet – but, then again, Bucky has always been an absolute sap for this man.

His first class isn’t until the afternoon so he indulges himself as well, leaning over to turn off the alarm on his phone and snuggling back down on his pillow. Watching Steve sleep is something he’s done since he was a scraped-knee kid, on the floor of the living room with a couch cushion beneath him and a blanket fort spread above them. Steve had been tiny then, a whipcord of strength and vinegar that had always seemed almost intoxicating. They’d stay up late, making each other giggle, and then wake up to pancakes or waffles or cereal. It had been one of those blissful, easy childhoods in the storybooks, all soft, warm edges in Bucky’s memory.

After Steve had gotten sick, he remembers sitting in cold hospital rooms, bright knit blankets the only splashes of color against white sterile walls. Steve had been small and pale in a too large bed, with a tube under his nose and another tube in his hand. They’d only been eleven years old.

He’d gone to the hospital almost every day after school. His parents, he remembered, had argued in whispered voices about the wisdom of letting him spend his time in an ICU. Bucky had dropped out of soccer, stopped hanging out with the other boys in the neighborhood. His world had narrowed to that hospital room and the scant few times Steve had opened his eyes to look at him.

Steve had been so frail during that period and it had been very close. Bucky hadn’t even really understood how close until he’d been part way through medical school, still heartsick over the loss of Sarah, and had gone back to read over Steve’s old chart. Steve had found him then, in their tiny apartment that they shared with another grad student, crying over the weathered pages, at the realization that all of this could’ve ended before they’d even really known each other.

Those memories though, that fear, has been what propelled Bucky through med school, through his residency and his fellowship and then into research and, now, on the brink of something that could change the world.

He reaches out, now, lays his hand on Steve’s broad chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath warm, smooth skin. Moments like this are rare and precious, moments where Steve is safe and with him. If Bucky had his way, Steve would spend his days painting in the small studio they set up for him on the ground floor. He’d have a quiet desk job at some non profit where he could sate his urge to help people without bullets flying over his head. Sometimes, it was exhausting sending his husband off into unknown lands with nothing but a soft kiss goodbye. It was exhausting spending hours on his feet in a classroom or bent over a microscope in a lab, burying himself in science until he could almost forget that his husband was thousands of miles away and in mortal peril.

He tips his hand up, lets his fingers walk across Steve’s sternum so that they trace the silvery bullet scar from the first time he got shot in the field. It was a shallow graze, had clipped his upper shoulder without hitting anything vital. He’d walked off the field under his own power and had gotten sent home with ibuprofen in antibiotics that night. It was still scary to see.

His hand traces further down, finds the fresh bandages wrapped around his ribs. Steve promised last night on the drive home that they were only cracked but Bucky hates seeing the bandages.

He loves Steve, though. He has loved him since he knew what love was. It’s a part of him like breathing or eating or sleeping or the creak in his knees when he entered his thirties three years ago. And, loving Steve means loving his bold, brave heart that sends him back into the firing line again and again to save those in peril. If he couldn’t charge into danger to rescue people, something vital inside Steve would start withering and Bucky would never want to see that happen. He loves him too much.

Steve’s breathing deepens slightly, hitching and then smoothing, as he opens his eyes. He blinks, blue eyes hazy from sleep and smiling as he finds Bucky’s face. “Hi,” he says, leaning close and planting a kiss on his cheek. “Good morning.”

Bucky grins, letting go of the thick worries in his head and basking in this moment. “I don’t have class until this afternoon,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.

Steve lays back, face wide and easy. “Then, I think I’m up for some private tutoring, Professor.”

###  _Steve_

Steve loves the quiet pace of the weeks that he has off duty: no missions looming, no sense of urgency. He wakes up each day, sun already warm on his eyelids, and Bucky sitting up in bed next to him, quietly reading or working on his laptop. Steve gets to stretch out his arms and wrap them around his waist and pull him close and bury his head in Bucky's side until Bucky has to disentangle himself and head off to lecture.

He loves this little life they've built for themselves and this little home that is theirs. Outside these doors, they both lead busy lives - in here, they can be themselves. Their master bedroom takes up the entire top floor of the little brick house they share about thirty minutes outside of DC. Wide windows on every wall stream in sunlight, and, in the middle, their king size bed sits against the wall with its thick pillows and warm creamy blankets.

Bucky's side has precarious stack of books and his glasses folded on the top. Steve's side has a black safe that he keeps his gun and bullets. The two disparate side of their life are plainly represented, yet the middle, with its soft rumpled sheets is the place where Steve feels most himself than any other place in the planet.

It's close to 10 am and Bucky is already at work when the call comes in on Steve's secure phone. He's in their kitchen, cutting up bananas for a smoothie after his run with Toby panting at his feet.

"Yeah," he says, hitting the speaker phone. "Rogers here."

"It's Hill," Maria says, even though his caller said had already told him. "Sorry to call you on your week off, Captain, but we have a mission in Venezuela. Senator Stern's son and his girlfriend have been kidnapped. High priority so your team’s been called in.”

Steve eats a piece of banana and deliberately chews as he says goodbye to the quiet peace of this week that he had been looking forward to for months. Of course. This is what he signed up for all those years ago when he joined SHIELD’s Strike teams. "What happened to Rumlow?” he asks, doing his best to make sure that no accusation comes through in his tone. Steve doesn’t like the guy but Rumlow hasn’t done anything to warrant Steve questioning his professionalism. The guy is the captain of Strike Beta, after all. “Isn't this week supposed to be his team?”

“Yep - but they got called to something urgent in Turkey so this one is now on you guys. I wish I could delay it until they get back but this came directly from Pierce. He doesn’t want to wait.”

He nods and tamps down any annoyance he feels. Sometimes this shit just happens. “When's take off?"

"We're aiming for 1300. We'll have specs and details on the plane."

"10-4," he says, waiting until she disconnects before hanging up the phone.

Toby stares up at him plaintively.

"Sorry," he says, running his fingers over the big soft head and stroking his floppy ear. "You're gonna have to keep your papa company a bit longer."

Toby huffs. Steve agrees.

He finishes making the smoothie and drinks it in big gulps as he heads up the stairs. His go-bag sits in next to the dresser in his bedroom and he does the perfunctory check, though he knows everything will be in place.

Restocking his go-bag is the first thing he does whenever he gets home. It's ritualistic in a way: folding the clothes, checking the toothpaste, cleaning the gun. Bucky will sit on the bed and watch him, scratching Toby's head and sometimes reading aloud from one of his lesson plans. It's domestic.

He slings it over his shoulder and heads down the stairs. If he hurries, he can surprise Bucky for lunch on campus before he leaves.

His bike is the best way to get into the city at this time. So he drops his go-bag in the back saddle and heads off. It's still nippy, the first warmth of spring hasn't fully kicked in yet. The brown leather jacket he's wearing over his standard black tshirt is one Bucky got him for Christmas a couple years ago. It fits like a comfortable glove now and Steve does his best to never go on missions without it.

It’s about a 35 minute drive from their place to the university. Bucky drives his gray Prius in, puttering along the green highway at a conscientious 65 mph. Steve opens the throttle on his bike and makes it in just under 25 minutes.

The new science building is tall and cold, sweeping metal and glass towering over an immaculately trimmed courtyard.

Bucky's office is on the third floor and Steve takes the stairs, bypassing the crowd of white coated doctors and scientists crowding in the lobby. He'd gone to the dedication of this building a few years ago as Bucky's plus one. He'd worn a stiff suit and a stiffer shirt and done his best to smile politely as men and women with entire alphabets behind their names droned on about the latest gene splicing technology or whatever.

Steve knows for a fact Bucky's colleagues consider him nothing more than arm candy. He's asked the perfunctory questions about his work, about what he studied at school, and somewhere between "supply chain" and "twentieth century propaganda art," their eyes glaze over and their smiles turn empty and they steer the conversation toward the latest advances in neuroscience.

He doesn't mind it. Hand to god, there is nothing Steve loves more than hearing Bucky's voice rise and fall with excitement as he discussed prokaryotic immune systems or the sequence of nucleotides. He loves seeing the look on Bucky's colleagues faces, a mixture of awe and jealousy at the sharp and laser focused mind in one so young. He's so proud of Bucky that his chest hurts with the force of it.

Sometimes, he wishes he had a job where he could show off a little in front of Bucky: where he could usher Bucky into his world of tactics and strategies and split second decisions between life and death.

He knows Bucky doesn’t doubt his intelligence but, outside of occasional trips to the firing range to keep Bucky at least a little comfortable with a handgun, Steve has very few ways to show off just how good he is at his job.

Bucky's met his team, of course. They try to have monthly dinners at one of their houses, spouses welcome. It's important to have those times of release. Living like they do, lying to everyone but each other and their spouses about their lives and their jobs is wearing. Steve knows it wears on Bucky.

If it's hard being away from Bucky, Steve imagines it must be doubly hard to be stuck at home, waiting constantly for news, and unable to even tell his friends what's going on. Whenever he’s home, Steve does his best to be as open as he can and show how much he appreciates the emotional turmoil he knows Bucky goes through because of his job.

He arrives on the third floor and breezes by students exiting a classroom before arriving at Bucky's office. The door is open and Steve knocks on the doorframe as he enters.

Steve loves Bucky's office. It feels like a peek into the interior of Bucky's mind. Warm sunlight spills through a wide window, pouring over tall, cramped shelves of books, papers and notebooks all stacked haphazardly. DNA models are perched on the top and glass awards are pushed to the back. A motivational poster of a dog running through a field of flowers is above the wide desk - Steve had gotten it for him midway through grad school right before he’d left for boot camp. It's a tiny office, even with Bucky’s growing prestige, tenure still rules all in academia; the desk takes up all the space leftover from the shelves and it's dominated by two monitors and Bucky's laptop and stacks of papers.

Bucky has his glasses on, leaning toward one of the screens with his mouth cocked in a familiar expression of concentration. His dark brown hair is pulled back sloppily, long strands hanging out of the band to fall around his face.

When Steve knocks softly on the door frame, he looks up and his expression loosens immediately when he sees Steve there. "Hey!" he says and his eyes brighten with familiar warmth. "What are you doing here?"

"Thought I'd take my best guy to lunch," Steve says. He leans against the doorway so his legs are shown to their best advantage. He smiles when Bucky’s eyes drag up the length of him. "You work too hard."

Bucky meets his eyes, still smiling, and instantly sees the truth there. After all these years, Bucky can read Steve like a book. His smile fades and he looks down at his keyboard, with a deep breath. When he looks back up, resignation fills his gaze. "They couldn't even give you the week."

Steve shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he offers and he really is - but both of them understand the realities of their careers.

They go to lunch at a little Korean BBQ place, far enough away from the science building that Bucky won't be recognized every couple minutes. It's cramped and the tables are small and the banging door to the kitchen just out of sight makes the back of Steve's neck tingle.

Bucky orders full plates of bulgogi for both of them and folds his hands neatly, staring across the table like Steve is a particular vexing science experiment. "How long?"

"Not long." Steve can never give specifics. Not even to his husband. It's the nature of the job. "Don't worry. We've had worse."

A waiter passes by and Bucky waits until he's clear before he snorts. "Yeah, okay. Remember that time you came home with six different bullet wounds. That doesn't give me a lot of comfort."

Steve fiddles with his napkin, gaze drawn to the table. He knows it's hard. He knows. He can't fully appreciate what Bucky goes through but he tries. He loves Bucky more than anything in the world and something sick inside of him always dreads the day when Bucky will ask him to choose. He’s seen it happen to friends, seen them give it all up for the person they love. "I'm sorry," is all he says now.

Bucky sighs, his frustration evaporating like a tangible thing. He reaches across the table, twining their fingers together. "I love you. I'll miss you. Come home to me." It's what he says before every mission, his own mantra. He says the words slowly like he's trying to put weight, feeling, or something magic into them.

"Always," Steve breathes and lifts their hands to press a kiss to Bucky's fingers.

"No goodbyes," Bucky says firmly, his gaze locked into Steve’s. "Never any goodbyes. Now, you need to eat up. God knows what they'll be feeding you wherever it is that you're going."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm participating in the Cap RBB, which starts posting next weekend, so be on the lookout for that!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at chapter 3! I took a small break to post my story for the Cap Reverse Big Bang - but we are back on schedule now and I think I'm making a little head way on the ending to this beast! 
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely feedback and kudos!

###  _Steve_

Steve gets to the airfield with about 20 minutes left to go before take off. The airfield they use is small - mostly DoD contractors and Pentagon officials and other highly specialized teams like theirs. He shows his ID at the gate and they wave him through with a "Safe travels, Captain Rogers." 

He drives down the long runway to the fifth hangar, parking just outside the small metal door. Natasha and Sam's cars are already there, which leaves Lang and Wanda left to arrive. Wanda is the newest and youngest member of their team - this would only be her fourth mission. She'd been recruited out of the CIA as a hostage negotiator and sniper - her knack for getting into people's heads was the uncanniest thing Steve'd seen. She was quiet, but dedicated and Steve had felt an almost instant kinship with her from the second he’d met her.

The others were practically family. Sam, Lang, and he had all gone through Ranger school together and Natasha had been one of the first people he met when he'd signed onto SHIELD. They'd been on Strike Alpha together for almost six years now. Their fifth until last month, had been a guy named Clint Barton until he'd retired to a desk job after the birth of his fourth child. 

In the hangar, the plane is already idling and Steve can see their pilot bent over the controls, going through his pre-flight checklist. Steve  heads back to the Ops room.

"Hey, Cap!" Sam calls as he comes through the door. Sam is already suited up, dark nondescript gear zipped to his chin. He has his kit balanced over his knees. "Didja catch the game last night? Nationals were looking pretty good there."

"In your dreams, Wilson," he returns easily, pulling out his kit from his locker. He changes out of his civvies quickly, pulling on his matching gear to Sam's. There are no insignias on their uniforms - the work that SHIELD does isn't often supposed to be even attributed to the USA. He takes off his wedding ring and slides it into the front pocket of his tac vest. "Did you hear the brief?"

"Yep - rescuing some spoiled Senator's son? Which favor do you think he called in to get us on the case?"

"Eh, it'll be a cush gig. In and out."

"Don't jinx us, Cap," Natasha says as she comes from the office area. She's already changed into her gear, as well, bright hair pulled back in a tight bun that makes her cheekbones sharp. "Remember the last time you said that."

Steve does remember: a mission in Laos that was supposed to be an in and out extraction of a North Korean asset from across the Chinese border. It had ended up being two weeks of tramping through hot, sticky jungle all the way to the US embassy in Thailand when their helicopter had been spotted by Chinese military. Everyone had made it out alive, no injuries, but it had been a miserable time. He knocks on the solid wood of his locker. "Won't say it again," he agrees.

“All I know is,” Sam says, “is that Rumlow is going to owe us at least a case of beer for us coming in on our week off. What’d you think, Cap? Think Rumlow’s team decided to go get strippers in Atlantic City and play hooky?”

“Hill says they’re on a mission, Wilson,” Steve says firmly. Part of being Captain is keeping peace between the different Strike teams - even if he thinks animosity toward Rumlow isn’t entirely off base. “You know they’d come in for us too.”

“We just seem to be cleaning up his messes a lot more than he’s cleaning up ours, if you know what I mean.”

Wanda and Lang arrive within moments of each other, with Maria just behind them, bearing a flash drive and secure SAT phones.

"Make this a quick one," she says drily when they're all on board. "Senator Stern has informed me that his son is supposed to be attending his grandmother's birthday in three days and it will be very unfortunate if he misses it."

Sam snorts and Steve keeps his face stoic - but he wholeheartedly agrees. This is a milk run that will cost the taxpayers millions more than necessary - not to mention calling in Strike Alpha on their week off.

Maria shoots them all a quelling look but Steve sees her shaking her head as she leaves. Steve's met Senator Stern once - some fundraiser during the last election season. He remembers his hand being sweaty and his face being a slick orange. Neither Bucky or himself had liked him much and this whole thing isn't improving his opinion. He is on the Senate Defense Committee though - which means he holds the purse strings for their unit and the handful of others like them. It's not surprising that SHIELD would take this job on, even reluctantly.

Their flight in is smooth. Steve texts Bucky a few times and reviews the op specs. They're going to be landing eighteen miles from where they believe the kidnappers are holed up in the Guiana Highlands near the Colombia border. It's going to be a high elevation, rocky and steep and dark. The goal is to make it to the kidnappers' camp before sunrise. Heat signatures on satellites showed 21 hostiles, besides the Senator's son and his girlfriend. They're being held in the main structure, a squat brick building in the middle of a cleared field, surrounded by a stone wall. 

Twenty-one hostiles seems like a lot, Steve thinks again, as he thumbs through the images on his tablet. The intel said that it was a local drug ring - but 21 people guarding two people? It’s weird.

He's overthinking it.

Steve thumbs off the tablet and stretches his legs out, leaning his head back and shutting his eyes. It's a milk run, he repeats to himself, as their plane bumps across the Gulf of Mexico. He'll be back soon. He lets himself drift out, the humming engines turning to background noise. They'll be hiking all night and the next day so getting some shut-eyes now is the best call.

###  _Bucky_

His office hours are almost over when one of his TA's knocks on the partly open door to his office. "Dr. Barnes?"

Bucky tries to swallow a sigh. He wants to go home. It's been a bad day ever since Steve dropped by for lunch. Not that he doesn’t love seeing Steve, but he'd been more excited about having an uninterrupted seven day stretch with his husband. Kissing him goodbye and sending him off on another mission has put him in a foul mood. All he wants to do is go home and cuddle with Toby and turn on reruns of Great British Bake Off while wearing Steve's sweatshirt, or something equally sappy and morose.

"Yes?" he says, looking up from the sheaf of papers he'd been grading.

His TA is fidgeting in the doorway and an old, squat man in a light gray suit is right behind her. He's wearing round glasses that make his eyes look bigger than they are. A dark cane is in his left hand and his bald head shines a little in the hallway lights. Bucky frowns, not recognizing him. 

"You have a visitor," his TA says. "He came down to the lab looking for you so I walked him up here."

Went down to the lab? Bucky studies the man. Most people would check in with the department admin or call him before wandering down to one of the more secure lab spaces on campus. "Thanks, Sherrene," he tells the TA. "You can go back down. I got this." He stands up. "Hi - I'm Dr. Barnes. What can I help you with?"

The man transfers his cane to his right and shakes his hand, gripping just a little too tightly with a clammy soft palm. "Forgive the intrusion, Doctor," he says as he sits down in the squat, rickety chair in front of Bucky's desk and leaning his cane to the side. There's a faint trace of an accent in his voice. Maybe French? "I come representing a research center in Norway. We have been watching your work with great interest these last few years and our backers would like to extend you an offer."

"I have a job, thanks," Bucky says with no hesitation. He sits back in his chair. This wouldn't be the first time someone from Big Pharma had come knocking on his door and he’s found that an immediate dismissal is the best way to go. 

"Your own state-of-the-art facilities," the man presses, leaning close enough that Bucky can see the hint of sweat on his forehead. "A staff of one hundred of the brightest, young scientific minds. All of the latest in equipment."

"I like my lab here."

The man makes a show of looking around the office, like he can barely hide his disdain. "Dr. Barnes," he says. "You are a brilliant scientist and clearly undervalued in the academic world. You don't even make six figures here. I am offering you seven times your current salary, plus generous percentages of any royalties from your discoveries. Your living expenses would be fully covered, with a generous allowance."

Bucky swallows. "Thank you for your offer," he says, more formally. "But I'm happy here. I like teaching. I like the work I'm doing." He pushes a little back from his desk and stands up, making it clear that this is done. "Please make an official appointment if you visit again."

The man isn’t quite ready to give up. “The rules here are quite archaic and limiting, are they not? So many regulations and policies. We’re offering freedom from that: the chance to truly advance science. These rules… they keep you from saving people. This is the easier route, Dr. Barnes.”

“It’s time for you to go,” Bucky says, steel entering his voice. “If you know anything about me, you’ll know that what you’re offering isn’t something that appeals to me in the least.”

The man stands up as well, bracing his hands on one knee and his cane like his joints pain him just a little. "Well, I appreciate your time, Dr. Barnes," he says. His pale hand slides into one suit pocket and comes out with a card, solid black, which he sets down on the desk. "If you ever change your mind. Good day." He leaves, turning on his heel and marches off with a vigor that belies the cane he carries. He disappears down the hallway and Bucky rubs the bridge of his nose.

Ignoring the card, he gathers the unfinished papers and his laptop into his satchel. Technically, there are five minutes left until office hours are over, but he's completely done. Steve is god knows where and Bucky doesn't have time for presumptuous men in expensive suits. He'd had the opportunity, right after he finished his first doctorate, to go work for one of the pharmaceutical companies. He'd gotten all dressed up in a tailored suit and gone on interviews in tall glass buildings with shining lobbies. 

Steve had been deployed long term in Afghanistan at the time and Bucky had felt so out of place and overwhelmed. He hadn't fit in with the elegantly suited men and women with dollar signs in their eyes. Bucky had never considered himself to be the idealist that Steve was - but he'd wanted something more than a lab geared toward making massive profit margins on the backs of sick people. He wanted something real. He wanted to help people like the kid Steve had been: dirt poor and hopeless and desperate.

He glances down at the card once before he drops it deep into the recess of his satchel, never to be seen again. Huh. There is no name on it, personal or company: just a single phone number with a country extension he doesn’t recognize offhand in glossy, raised gray text. That’s odd. Come to think of it, Bucky realizes, as he walks down the hallway to the elevator and hits the button, the guy hadn't offered a name during their brief meeting earlier. 

Oh, well. It isn't like Bucky is ever planning on taking them up on their offer.

###  _Steve_

The team keeps a good pace across the mountains after landing. It's a clear night, a bright moon and thousands of stars lighting the sky. The landscape looks ghostly, dark shadows and looming mountains stretching all the way across the horizon. Steve keeps at the head, setting a fast clip, with Lang taking up the rear. They're packing light for this one: flares and rifles but not much in the way of heavy artillery.

The plane is heading down to a friendly air strip in Brazil, ready to pick them up once they call.  If all goes well, the senator’s son will be back stateside in a matter of hours.

It's cool in the mountains, this time of year, and the chill seeps into the canvas of Steve's pants as they move through the undergrowth. The foliage is dense as they travel downward, thick trees pack closely together and the undergrowth comes up to Steve's knees. It would be easy to get turned around, he thinks, as all the trees start looking the same.

The jungle has a chatter to it, a low humming rhythm that rises and falls with the wind. It would be fun to backpack here, Steve decides, as they skirt along a densely packed valley. He can see the silver thread of a river below, a cluster of houses in a clearing. He tries to imagine coming back here with Bucky.

Bucky would love the teeming life here in the wildness. For all that he and Bucky are city boys, Bucky had always shown a deep appreciation for the freedom of the wilderness. Untamed nature seemed to quiet something deep within him, bringing his mind to a place of stillness. The couple times they'd been to the forests in upstate New York, Bucky had spent hours sitting amongst the trees, eyes turned inward like he was examining something deep within. The last time, Steve had brought his sketchbook and had it filled to the brim with images of Bucky leaning against trees or perched on top of rocks or beside rushing streams. That had been a good vacation. 

They'd taken it in the summer years ago, right before Steve had gone away to Ranger camp. Bucky had been newly back in school to work on his Ph.D after his medical residency, constantly strung between bone deep exhaustion and frenetic energy, and Steve had been antsy from six months of sitting around after his last tour in Afghanistan. They'd been snappish and as tight as rubber bands when Steve had suggested the trip. Bucky had been reluctant, dragging a metric ton of books into their beat up Honda for the trip and sniping how he’d just be sitting indoors studying the whole time Steve was hiking or whatever.

When they got there, though, to the tiny cabin in the rickety resort they'd been staying in, Bucky's eyes had softened and the books had stayed in the trunk. They'd spent two glorious weeks, swimming in the lake and wandering the trails. Steve still has a picture from that trip in one of the inside pockets of his tac vest, right next to his wedding band. It's the two of them with their arms slung around each other on a narrow dock while the sun is just a white orb in a blue sky above. The lake ripples around them, dark trees on the distant beach. Bucky is tanned to a nut brown and Steve looks faintly pink.

They look happy and young and so alive. It's what Steve likes to remember on these dark nights.

When the team reaches the look out point over the camp that they had identified, it's still three hours before dawn. They'd made good time. The moon is milky and curved, just a white crescent in the dark gray sky. 

Steve carefully runs his night vision lenses over the dark buildings while Wanda sets up her sniper station. Sam and Lang are scouting out the perimeter and Natasha is guarding the trail behind them. 

Under his gaze, three guards are circling the perimeter in rough, uneven loops. There's a dying fire in the middle of the encampment. He goes through the buildings one by one. The main, large building where they're holding the Senator's son and his girlfriend. An outhouse. A long building that holds the barracks. Two rickety sheds. He zeroes in on the last shed and frowns. 

He studies it for a second and then taps his earpiece. "Command, this is Rogers. Do you copy?"

"Go ahead, Cap," says Sharon's voice instantly. "We got you loud and clear."

"One of the buildings here looks like it's been recently upgraded. Can you get an idea of what they have inside?"

There's silence over the line for several long moments and then Sharon comes back. "That's a negative, Cap. I'm not detecting any radiation or explosive residue but the material they to build it is playing havoc with our sensors. Could be some kind of bauxite is laced through the bricks. That's really common in that part of the world and has been known to cause interference."

"Copy." Steve lets go of his earpiece and frowns again. It's probably nothing. He's just being paranoid. In the field, knowing when to trust gut feelings and when to trust intel was as key as anything else. Steve took a long look at the building. They'd avoid it if they could, he decided. Their mission wasn't whatever was in there. Their mission was grabbing the two hostages and getting out. 

Sam's voice comes over his earpiece. "We confirm twenty-one hostiles, Cap. Stern and Jennings have vital signs consistent with being asleep. They have eight hostiles in there with them. Two are awake and the rest are asleep. Ten hostiles asleep in the barracks and three are on guard duty. How do you want to play this?"

"Let's snatch 'em and go - I'd rather not fight off all of them at once."

Natasha hums over the line. "But things are getting so boring."

Steve shakes his head, knowing she's close enough behind to see him. "Wanda, get your nest set up. Sam and Lang, circle back and meet us here. We'll head down the gulley and cross behind the main building. We'll tranq the sentries and then move to the hostages. It looks like there's a big enough window for Nat to squeeze through. We'll wait for her signal and come through the front door - since she wants to have some fun."

"Thanks, Cap,” she says drily behind him. 

The perimeter guards are easy, going down soundlessly with the tiny tranquilizer darts in the sides of their necks. They'll wake up in 2-4 hours with a splitting headache and terrible dry mouth. In their line of work, it isn't always possible to preserve life but Steve likes to prioritize it whenever he can. Wanda has her sniper rifle up above and he hopes she won't have to use it. 

They slide through the dark shadows of the buildings, packed dirt muffling their footsteps. 

Steve can hear his own steady breathing and the gentle sway of the wind in the dense foliage. The other jungle sounds, humming insects and flapping birds and the chatter of nocturnal animals, seems quieter here. It's almost an eerie stillness, like the animals know larger predators are lurking tonight. 

Natasha nods to him as they circle the main building, her pale face catching the starlight for just a moment, before she breaks off from the group and heads for the single window along the backside. The shadow of her fades quickly in the dim light and Steve makes a quick hand gesture.

With Sam and Lang behind him, they skirt around the back, approaching the heavy front door. 

The night goes quiet, just a slow breeze rustling a few leaves. Steve waits, counting in his head, each second drawing out like taffy. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds crawl by and Steve hears a muffled thud from behind the door. Then two more in quick succession. 

Natasha says, from behind the door, "Clear." The door swings in and she's smiling, hair in wisps around her face. "Thanks for the work out, Cap."

Steve catches a glimpse of the pale frightened faces of a man and woman in their mid twenties as Nat herds them from the dark interior. The man is in dark gray pants suit pants, white shirt smudged and torn, and the woman is in a dark pencil skirt and a dark blue silk tank top. They don’t look like kids who had been kicking it in Caracas - they look like they had been in business meetings. 

“William Stern?” he asks just to be sure. 

The guy nods. He looks exhausted, eyes reddened and dark bags in his skinny face. “Did my father send you?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve does his best to smile reassuringly even as his gut is screaming a warning. He’d been expecting a boozy, indolent young man. Not this. “This Agent Romanoff. She’ll be escorting you. We have a helicopter picking us up in forty five minutes.” He surveys them both again. “No injuries?”

Stern exchanges a glance with the woman. “We’re okay.”

“Good.” Steve motions to Nat. “Lang, Romanoff. Take them up to the rendezvous. Sam and I will be just behind you.”

Natasha shoots him a look but she placed a warm hand on the woman’s back, pushing her in the direction of the trees. “Don’t be late, Cap,” she murmurs into the comms. 

Lang nods to them both and heads after her. 

“Wanna see what’s in that shed?” Steve asks Sam, off comms and under his breath in the still night. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Sam bobs his head. “Just behind you.” 

The dust is scuffed with dozens of footprints. People had marched in and out of this last shed. Steve crouches, checks the depth of the print with one finger. They’d been carrying something heavy. Crates of drugs? Guns?

They come up at the single door of the shed from two different angles. Steve cocks his head at the barracks. All is silent. 

He lifts one gloved hand from the butt of his gun. Three. Two. One. 

The door isn’t locked and gives easily under his hand. He goes high. Sam goes low and they sweep through the narrow door and into the stuffy interior of the shed. 

“Shit,” Sam breathes. 

Everything inside the shed is infused with a dull, sickly green. Dark metal is stacked and piled in boxes. Steve pushes up his goggles up into his hair and leans close. What is this? It almost reminds him of...

“Chitauri,” he says out loud as everything starts clicking into place. He runs his hand over the edge of one of the crates. They’d had a demo, a couple years back, showing what the Chitauri weapons were capable of. It had been the only time he’d seen anything like this up close. “Shit. This is alien tech.”

Sam is shaking his head. “This is illegal for civilians.”

Steve swallows. The bad feeling in his gut grows. Business men in Caracas. A senator. Alien weapons in the mountains. “We’ll need to take this back with us... somebody has to know....”

“Cap!” Wanda says sharply over the comms and that’s all the warning Steve gets before a green flash lights up the dark. He goes blind for a split second, vision flaring out as the brightness washes over the room. There’s no boom, no loud bang that he’d expect from an explosion, just a concussive blast that knocks him off his feet and into the wall of the shed. He catches the brunt on his shoulder and does his best to roll out of it, controlling his momentum so he can come up, facing the direction of the blast.

A dark figure is framed in the doorway and Steve sees a flare of blue green in its hands. “Sam!” he shouts and then an energy beam pulses toward him. 

The world stretches, pulling apart at all its seams like an old rubber band. Steve lunges, trying to get out of the way. He smells sulfur and dirt and sees the stars, bright pinpricks through the open door. 

_Bucky_ , he thinks. _Bucky_. 

It’s not like getting shot: the punch of pain that leaves you breathless as your muscles contract around the injury. 

This is worse. This is a freezing burn, so hot his body can’t even interpret the sensations correctly. It catches his stomach and flank and he thinks his blood is sizzling as he hits the ground face-forward. He thinks his eyes are open and he thinks he sees Bucky. 

That doesn’t make any sense, though. 

There are voices in his ear and he hears the sharp report of a gun, slow motion through his ears. 

Steve rolls over, swallows. His hands are shaking and he can’t breathe and the stretching rubber band of the world snaps with a thick crack. Blood is pooling in his chest and he’s wheezing. 

Sam is there, suddenly. He looks pale. He’s saying something but Steve can’t hear. Everything goes dim and quiet, like he’s at home, under their comforter, and the blackout curtains are drawn. 

He drifts there, in the warmth and fuzziness of a late morning in bed with Bucky reading beside him. Toby is laying over his legs. His eyes must be closed, he thinks. Voices swim around him, urgent but distant, like the remnants of a nightmare. 

The world drops suddenly and he’s jerking and bouncing like a carnival ride. Blood is wet over his tongue, air coming like he is breathing through a muddy straw.

It hurts. Everything hurts. Burning up his lungs and freezing through his guts. He might groan because things settle suddenly. 

“He’s awake,” someone says. 

He blinks. Everything is dim, blurry shapes and trees and he smells wet dirt. 

“Steve, Steve, can you hear me?”

Natasha. He groans and tries to speak but just ends up coughing. It hurts. He thinks he’s crying, tears hot on his cheeks and Natasha’s hands are pressing on his cheeks. 

“Hold on, Steve,” she says. “I know it hurts. Only 15 miles to the drop zone. Yeah? They’re coming in hot and we’ll get you home. Stay with us.”

He swallows and knows he’s dying. He knows every one of Nat’s tones and expressions and she’s scared. She wouldn’t be scared if she thought he’d make it. 

_Shit_. 

The sentiment breaks through the pain and the fuzziness and crests loud and clear at the forefront of Steve’s brain. Shit. He’s not gonna make it. 

“Nat,” he says, though he’s not sure he’s made any actual noise. His fingers scrabble. He’s on some sort of plank, he realizes, a makeshift stretcher. 

She leans close though, like she knows anyway. Her fingers find his and squeeze. He can barely make out her face. 

“Tell Buck,” he says and it feels like he’s pulling the words out of his throat through gravel. “ ‘m sorry. Love him.”

Natasha grips him hard - he can feel each of her fingers pressing into his palm and uses that to help clear his head of pain. “Don’t, Steve,” she says. And then, a little wetly, “I’ll tell him. Hold on. He’s gonna kill me if you don’t make it.”

Steve smiles and gives his best attempt at squeezing her fingers back. Things are going distant again, reality dissolving in sparks and he’s just slipping into the cracks below all the sensations. 

He goes back to the lake, slides into that long ago day he still carries around in his pocket. The sun is warm and Bucky is vibrant. He’s swimming out to the deep waters, Bucky laughing next to him. They’re embracing with the wide lake spilling around them and the sun beating down on their heads. 

_Heaven_ , Steve thinks. _I've found heaven._


	4. Chapter 4

###  _Bucky_

Bucky’s just finished walking Toby when his phone starts chirping. He hangs up the leash by the door and grabs it from his pocket, without checking the front. This early in the morning, it’s probably the lab and a grad student. 

“Hello?” he says as he pours Toby’s food into his bowl. The dog pants his gratitude. 

“Bucky?” 

It’s Sam. 

Bucky freezes, crouched on the floor next to the dog bowls, hand buried in the soft thick fur at Toby’s nape. “Sam?” he asks. 

There are a hundred simple things this could be. So many reasons Sam would be calling him and not Steve. But, right now, Bucky can’t think of a single one. He can hear rushing behind Sam's voice, like the team is still on the airplane. 

“He’s alive,” Sam says. “He’s alive, okay? We’re landing in an hour and they’re going to airlift him to Walter Reed. Maria is sending,” the words go muffled for a moment, jet engine noise overwhelming everything else. Sam comes back, a bit louder: “Sorry. Maria is sending a car and a couple junior agents. One will get you to Walter Reed and the other will hang out with Toby, handle anything you need at home, okay? They’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

It’s a lot of information. Overwhelming. Sam is doing it on purpose, Bucky knows. He’s giving him stuff to focus on, giving him a plan so he’s not sitting here spinning in his own thoughts. They do this with other families, in the worst situations. This is the worst situation. 

Bucky gets up. He feels numb, Toby is licking his hand, rough tongue rasping from his knuckles to his wrist. He forces himself to focus on that sensation. “Okay,” he repeats. “Is he...” he swallows. Be brave, he thinks. Be brave. Steve needs you brave. “Is he conscious? Can I talk to him?”

Sam makes a noise that is quickly stifled. It makes Bucky’s stomach drop even further. “He isn’t right now,” he says and his voice sounds so gentle. “They have him on a lot of stuff. You’ll see him soon. I know he’s gonna want to see you as soon as possible.”

There’s something heavy in Sam’s voice and it’s like the world has gone off kilter. Breathe, he reminds himself. 

“Okay.” His voice sounds distant and hollow and not his own. “Okay. I’ll be ready. Call me if... call me if anything changes.”

He has a duffle bag packed by the time someone knocks at his door. A change of clothes for Steve and himself, the knit blanket Steve’s mom made for him while she was sick, his laptop and the book Steve had been reading before he left. He kisses Toby on the head, presses his face to the dog’s side. 

“Be good for me, okay?” he whispers. “We’ll be home soon.”

Toby pants and the junior agent smiles at him. “I’ll take good care of him, sir,” he says. “Just let me know anything else you’d like me to handle.”

Bucky nods, fumbling with his keys. “My job... I have a class...”

“I’ll call them, sir.”

It’s a plain black sedan and the young uniformed woman stows his bag. “The plane is still about 40 minutes out, sir. ETA to Walter Reed is 90 minutes.”

Bucky nods and clutches his phone. He tries to breathe. 

He’s been to Walter Reed before. Steve took some bullets in his hip two years ago and broke his ankle five years ago. In both cases, Steve had been in general wards and Bucky had sat in wide, peaceful waiting rooms with smiling families. 

This time, they take him through a back entrance and he follows his guide through winding halls to a small conference room. The walls are a pale gray and there’s a wide window overlooking a fountain. He can see flowers and clouds. The chairs are plush and elegant.

This is where they tell families someone is dead, he thinks as Maria gets up from one of the chairs to greet him. They do it here, in solitude and peace, so no one causes a scene.

Her hair is pinned back neatly and her hands are solid as she guides him down. He’s always liked her. She’s steady and no nonsense and her eyes are always kind. She must do a lot of these, he thinks bleakly, to be so good at this.

“How are you doing?” she asks. 

He shrugs. “Any word?” There’s no use pretending. 

“He’s in the med evac chopper now.” She folds her hands neatly. “I thought you may want to go out to the helipad to meet them. They’ll be taking him right to surgery.”

Bucky nods, puts his hand on his stomach because nausea is building. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?” He wants to ask what happened - but he knows she can’t answer. 

Her face doesn’t crack; no reassuring smile, no tremulous frown. She is blank and steady. “Steve is the strongest man I know,” she says and the words would seem like a platitude except for the gravity she imbues them with. 

“What happened?” he asks. “This was supposed to be his week off. He wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

Maria looks down and he thinks he sees a flicker of something hurt in her mouth. “Strike Force Beta…” she trails off and clears her throat. “Rumlow’s team. They were called to some classified situation in Turkey. This call came in and Command made it Priority One - so we called in Steve’s team.”

Bucky’s never heard her call him Steve before, he realizes. It’s always “Captain” or “Cap” or “Rogers.” Somehow, that shakes him more than anything else.

“Director Pierce wanted to be here,” she says quietly. “He sends his best wishes.”

The name brings up a foggy mental image of the day Steve had been inducted into SHIELD - an older handsome man pinning a medal onto his husband’s shoulder. “Thank you,” is all he manages.

The world jumps and skips and he finds himself on a gray helipad with rotors kicking up his hair and jacket. Someone has swung the doors open before the blades even have completely stilled and he thinks _Steve_ \- but all he sees are dark uniforms and sheets. More white coats are rushing to meet them and he thinks of med school and the thrill of a trauma. He feels frozen. They get closer and he sees Sam, dressed in black tacs and talking fast. 

“Sam,” he says, raising his voice to carry over the flurry. 

Sam jerks his head up, meeting his eyes and, for an unguarded instant, Bucky sees so much grief in them that it makes his lungs wring out like a sponge. A second later, Sam has buttoned it all up into something professional and he’s motioning for Bucky. 

“Steve? Steve? Can you wake up for me, buddy? I got Bucky here and I know he’d love to talk to you.” He has one hand on Steve’s face, another hand on his neck.

The sight of Steve is a blur at first: a jumble of disparate pieces that don’t quite connect. There’s an IV in a pale arm, red blood in the tube. There’s a hazy oxygen mask with green straps going across sallow skin. There’s a long streak of blood down a white neck. Blonde hair, sweaty and dark, laying limp across a wrinkled forehead. 

Bucky steps forward and the images slam together. Steve is on his back, oxygen mask obscuring most of his face. Blood is in his hair and across his skin. Thick pressure bandages are wound about his middle. His eyes are blinking, thick lashes dragging across his face and blue glimmering, up and down, up and down, like he's trying so hard to stay awake. His hands, his beautiful hands, are limp and dirty at his sides. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, still a distance away from the gurney, too many medical personnel for him to try and worm through. His voice, to his surprise, sounds much steadier than he feels. “Steve. I’m right here. Can you look at me?” 

Steve blinks but he doesn’t react, doesn’t twitch. His eyes roll, roving upward toward the sun streaming down on their heads around the shadow of the hospital.

Bucky slips forward, pushing his way between the doctors to put his hand on Steve’s jaw as Sam’s falls away to make room. He’s so pale, skin too cool beneath his fingers. 

Steve might turn into his touch or maybe he’s just moving with the motion of the stretcher. Bucky feels his jaw flex, though, like he’s talking.

“What?” he says sharply. He needs to know what Steve is saying. He needs to know. Because. Because. 

High pitched beeping cuts through the clamor and hands pull him away from Steve's side. There are so many voices, medical jargon he should know but all of it just floats away and Bucky is left gasping, adrift, as Steve is pulled away. 

“Bucky?” Sam is there, an arm around his shoulders, supporting him. “Do you need to sit down?”

“He can’t die,” Bucky says as the door to Walter Reed slams shut and Steve is gone from view. “Sam. He can’t die.”

Sam doesn’t say anything at all - he just reaches out his hand and places Steve's wedding band and dog tags in Bucky's palm.

###  _Bucky_

It’s bad. 

At some point between the phone call this morning and now, sitting in the quiet conference room with the yellow moon hanging high outside the window, the scientist part of Bucky’s brain has clicked into full motion. He lets it swamp the sickness in his gut and the ache in his heart and the way his eyes scratch with tears. He’s spent the last few years in academia, in carefully controlled labs with timelines and controls and the slow drip of titration. He’s lived in theories and hypotheticals and scientific futures, just beyond the reach of his outstretched hands. 

In this hospital, in this quiet conference room with Sam sleeping two chairs away and the love of his fucking life dying in the hands of doctors, Bucky feels the frail knife’s edge of mortality in a way he hasn’t since his residency. He has awards and titles and job offers, yet all of that is so much useless clutter in the face of saving Steve. 

His laptop is out and his phone is sitting next to it, an untouched cup of coffee just beyond that. Steve's dogtags are around his neck and his wedding ring is on Bucky's left thumb (the only finger it'll fit). He has an article from a researcher at Johns Hopkins on the latest advances in bowel transplants. He has another call into Michigan University for latest techniques on helping patients survive long term on cardiopulmonary bypass. 

Because this is bad. 

In med school, years and years ago when Steve was still an army grunt, Bucky’d attended a lecture by the doctor who invented the heart-lung machine. Sometimes, he looks back at his career and credits that moment with igniting the never ending urge to discover deep inside of him. 

Even now, he can see the black and white photos: a young boy and a man laying side by side in an operating room as the man’s heart beat for both of them as surgeons fought to save the boy’s life. A man, a neighbor, had been willing to risk his life to give this boy, to give science, a chance. 

Bucky thinks that he would do that now. He’d lay down on that operating table, he’d let them thread the tubes through his heart and through Steve and he would make his heart beat for Steve and himself as long as he could - for the rest of their lives. He would give his very pulse to keep Steve with him. That isn’t what Steve needs from him though. 

Steve needs his brain. Steve needs his years puttering around in labs with the best scientists and doctors. He needs the latest advances that Bucky can wrench from lab tables and testing groups.

The doctors are trying to be optimistic and Bucky has no reason to doubt their abilities - but he can see the hurdles they face. Steve’s intestines are shredded. They’re trying to save as much as they can now but Bucky doesn’t think there will be much left. One kidney is gone and the other is hanging by a thread. His liver is severely damaged. His stomach is leaking acid and his lungs are non functional. All of that is putting strain on his heart and that’s been weak since Steve was a little kid. On top of all that, there’s weird alien shit in his blood that’s causing additional damage to his heart and lungs that they can’t explain. His heart has stopped twice (which is when they put him on the CPB machine) and they’re not sure if there will be any lasting damage to his brain.

They’re in surgery now - not even trying to fix anything, just trying to stem the tide to let Steve survive long enough to get stronger. If Bucky stops, stops reading and emailing and calling and researching, he thinks of how hopeless it is. He knows there are doctors with Steve who think that, even now, they’re just prolonging the inevitable. If he's honest with himself, Bucky thinks they might be just prolonging the inevitable too.

Bucky doesn’t let himself think that way though - doesn’t let himself stop trying. 

Maria left hours ago, called back to the office to do damage control on whatever op had done this to Steve, but Sam hasn’t left Bucky’s side the whole time. He’s fetched coffee and food and forced water bottles into Bucky’s hands. He held him while Bucky retched in the trash can when he’d seen the first scans of Steve’s belly. Thank god for Sam.

It’s scarcely morning when the doctors come to get him. He hasn’t slept, wired on coffee and manic energy. He feels like he did when he’d been working on his PhD, strung out like a junkie and numb to humanity. They all sit across the table from him, fold their hands. 

“Dr. Barnes,” the kindest looking doctor says. She has glasses on her nose and her hands are surgeon’s, long and graceful and hardy. Bucky never had surgeon hands. He has hands for holding lab instruments and pens and Steve’s guns, not prodding through the insides of dying people. She talks to him frankly, like a colleague and not a bereaved husband and he appreciates it more than he put into coherent thoughts. 

She doesn’t sugar coat it or mince words or dance around his feelings. She tells it straight and true. It doesn’t make it any easier but at least Bucky can take it on the chin. Wait and see. This won’t be a sneak attack. This is an enemy across a wide plain and Bucky has to dig out the trenches and set up the perimeter and be the sniper in the trees while Steve is defenseless below. 

“How long is he going to stay on the bypass?” he asks, striving to match her clinical tone. He’s Steve’s lieutenant and this is the biggest war of their lives. 

She hesitates. “If his vitals improve in the next 24 hours, we’ll be taking him back to surgery to try and repair some of the damage to his heart. Hopefully, he can come off of it then. Much longer and we risk additional and permanent damage. He may need to be on the respirator for longer though.”

He fumbles, pulls at the papers from Johns Hopkins. “I know a small bowel transplant is likely going to be needed and I’ve been speaking to Dr. Arif and he has some…” 

“We’re not there yet, Dr. Barnes,” she says, not harshly but firm. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Small goals. We want him to get through the next couple days without developing an infection - give his natural defenses time to kick in a little.”

Time to see if he’ll survive, she means. After all, organs are scarce commodity - they don’t go to people who are on death’s door from alien weapons. 

Bucky makes himself nod. He looks down, taps his fingers on the conference table. Sam is silent, steady. “Can I see him?” He finally asks. He lets the emotion bleed through the mask.

She nods. “He’s in a private section of the ICU. You’ll be able to stay with him.”

When Bucky sits down next to Steve, it’s all startling clear to him again why, years ago, he had chosen to leave the hospital and go back to the sterile world of academia. Dying people are nothing like science. Dying is messy and ugly and his hands shake like they never do around a microscope. 

Steve is unconscious. He’s on a bypass and the sheet is pulled up to his bare chest. His hair has been washed of blood at least, but it lies limp and matted on his scalp. He looks nothing like himself and everything like himself: Steve stripped down to just the bare bones of his body, all the vivacity sucked away. Bucky reads his chart, checks all the readouts, puts his fingers on Steve’s neck to feel for a fever. 

When he finally sits down, all of the words stick in his throat and he swallows, chews his lip. He puts his hand out, hovering it briefly over Steve's forearm, then pulls it back. Bucky isn’t good at helpless - ever since he was a kid, he’d been the one watching Steve’s back and now he’s stuck on the sidelines as Steve fights the biggest struggle of his life. It reminds him of when Steve was small and sick - it reminds him of when Sarah was sick. The memories duel in his head, mingling with the present, and he feels sick.

Bucky has survived a lot of loss in his life. First, both of his parents had been taken from him in the space of a single evening just a couple months after he’d left for college. Then, Sarah had died just three short years later. He survived all of that. This, though, he thinks, might be the one that breaks him for good. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m right here, baby,” he says, low. He leans forward so that he’s speaking right to Steve’s ear. “I’m right here. You hang on because I’m hanging right back. You don't get to leave me.”

Hospitals aren’t made for sleeping: only the truly exhausted and the drugged managed to catch more than a nap here and there. He remembers that from when both of them were basically living by Sarah’s bedside in those last weeks. 

Bucky slouches over Steve’s bed, eyes closed and fingers wrapped tight over Steve’s. He drifts, uneasy and hazy, on the edge of awareness as the exhaustion of the last 20 hours weighs against his need to listen and track every single one of Steve’s mechanical breaths. 

He’s caught between a dream of a dark hallway and the beep of Steve’s pulse when someone clears his throat right behind him. 

Bucky jumps, wiping sleep from his eyes. 

“Oh, did I wake you?” someone says and Bucky actually groans out loud.

“Tony.”

Tony Stark comes around the side of the bed. He’s in jeans and a dark t-shirt, sunglasses pushed to the top of his head, even though it's around three in the morning. He looks tired but also shockingly awake, considering that hour. “He looks rough,” Tony says, tucking his hands into his pocket and rocking back on his heels. “Has he woken up at all?”

Bucky swallows. Tony means well, he reminds himself. He’s never understood the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve. There was some sort of secret mission, maybe three or four years back, and Tony had been involved. The details were all strictly classified but Steve and Bucky now did dinners at Stark Tower a couple times a year with Tony and his partner, Pepper.

Steve always complained as they headed down to New York, moaning about the helicopter Tony would insist on sending to pick them up and whatever extravagant meal Tony would have planned. Mostly it was just the three of them - Pepper was the CEO of Stark Industries and spent most of her time on private planes and in conference rooms. Tony would bring in some 5-star chef to cater and then they'd always end up in front of the TV, eating nachos and playing video games. Despite his early complaining, Steve always enjoyed the evenings and he genuinely cared for Tony - Bucky could tell in the way Steve rolled his eyes at Tony’s jokes and the way his lips quirked when Tony laughed at his. Theirs was a strange friendship, not unlike the one that Bucky has slowly built with Tony as well. 

At first, Bucky had spent most of his time with Pepper (when she was there), grinning indulgently from the sidelines as Steve and Tony bickered like teenagers. Then, somewhere along the line, Tony had stopped mocking Bucky for his love of academia and his refusal to go into private industry and started to be interested in his work. Tony and Pepper had been the ones who'd suggested that Bucky apply for the Stark Industries grant - neither of them had obviously been on the panel that made any of the decisions but it had been the kick Bucky needed anyway to finish the application. When he'd won, Bucky thinks Stark had been just as surprised as anyone. 

Pepper had kissed his cheek and told him he was going to do great things.

“No,” Bucky answers Tony’s question now, tamping down irritation that comes from no sleep and high stress. He rubs Steve's wedding ring, turning it round and round his thumb restlessly. “He hasn’t woken up, not really.”

Tony sits down in a chair against the wall, takes his sunglasses off his head and fidgets, using one earpiece to twirl them like a child's toy. “He’s a tough one,” he offers.

Bucky nods. “Thanks.”

“He’s going to die though.” Tony sits forward as he says it, matter-of-factly like he is announcing the dinner menu. 

What the hell. Bucky’s stomach flips unhappily at the words and he leans closer to Steve instinctively, feeling the warmth from his skin. Irrationally, he wants to cover Steve's ears so he won't hear. The irritation he’s been suppressing comes up in a thick surge. “You don’t,” he rasps, then swallows hard and starts again m. “You don’t get to just prance in here and say that, Stark. He’s not going to die.”

“Bucky. He is. Look at his chart.”

Bucky resolutely does not look. _Don't listen to him, Steve._ “You just said it. He’s tough. “

Stark nods. “Toughest I know. And he’s still going to die. You can tell he’s getting a fever, can’t you? His body can’t fight off the infection. His organs are going to start shutting down. They won’t be able to keep him alive much longer. There won’t be a surgery or a transplant. They’ll do everything they can and, in the end, everything will be keeping him comfortable and you calm until he codes and they can let him go.”

“Shut up.” It comes out in a hoarse whisper. “Just shut up.” His eyes are burning and he drops his forehead so it’s resting on Steve’s hands. Let me hope, he wants to say. Just for a few more hours. Let me be with him and believe. “I can’t lose him.”

Stark stands up. Bucky hears his footsteps pace around the bed until he’s standing right over Bucky. “We can save him,” he says, serious like a grave. “Bucky, we can. But he’s gonna die if we do nothing.”

His throat is dry like dust and he can’t make his tongue move so he just shakes his head. 

Stark’s hand touches his shoulder. “Are you listening to me?”

Bucky makes himself sit up, makes himself wipe his eyes. He forces a deep breath, forces himself to look at Steve’s pale face and limp hands. He’s dying. “What are you saying, Tony?”

“RB-32557.”

Bucky balks, eyes flying away from Steve to stare at Tony. “How do you… what? How do you even know about that? That’s not... we haven’t even gotten approved for human trials yet.” 

“I know. I’ve been looking over your recent results though. It’s impressive.” He flips his phone into his hand and a spinning chain of proteins suddenly appears in the air between them. Bucky recognizes it instantly from the last year he’s spent bent over a microscope.

“You... hacked my lab?” Bucky shakes his head. “Jesus, Tony.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal your work. Look. When you applied to the Stark Industries grant, you had to provide certain lab results and information. Your pitch didn't mention RB-32557 exactly but I read between the lines. When some of my colleagues visited the labs in the last phase of the application, I just had one of them install some harmless software that would just... monitor what you were doing. You know a guy name Bruce Banner?”

Bucky nods. “Dr. Banner. I attended a couple lectures of his back when... before his lab accident.” To put it kindly.

“He works for me now. Banner. We think RB-32557 is the key to making the Rebirth serum work.”

The laugh that comes out of his throat hurts, shocked out of him by the sheer absurdity of Tony’s words. “The Rebirth serum is like the fucking Fountain of Youth, Tony. It’s a myth.”

Tony’s eyes are shining in the dim light of the hospital room. He looks manic. Is he manic? Should Bucky be calling someone? “It’s not. Bruce was close - so close - before the... incident.”

"Does Pepper know you're here?" Bucky asks, carefully.

Stark visibly rolls his eyes. "Barnes. Stop and think."

This is crazy. Bucky shakes his head again. “They thought they were close back during World War II and there were never any super soldiers that came from it.” He’s read Erskine's papers. Every scientist who goes into biological chemistry or molecular biology has at some point. It’s the holy grail - the ability to jumpstart the body’s own immune system and regenerative properties to advance human biology to the next stage of human evolution. It would revolutionize the world. Bucky’s work had drawn from that - been inspired by it - but he has been targeting specific receptors in the very young to cure diseases. He wasn’t trying to create a super soldier serum. 

Tony is pacing now, his fingers dragging over the bed. “They only reason they didn’t do it was because the lead scientist died and everyone got redirected towards the nukes. C’mon, Barnes. Use your head. You’re smart. Almost as smart as me. Put it together. RB-32557 on the delivery system Bruce and I have been working on... if we gave it to Steve, it could give him the boost to survive this.”

It’s insane. “Or it could kill him. There’s a reason Banner lost his lab and his job, Stark. I won’t... I can’t...”

“He’s going to die anyway. Look at him, Barnes. This is his best chance. You could save him.”

Bucky looks down, his fists clench. “Please leave, Tony. I’m not... I can’t.”

Tony actually takes a step back but he’s shaking his head. “You’re making a mistake. I hope you’ll figure that out before it’s too late. Call me, if you do.”


	5. Chapter 5

###  _Bucky_

The day had worn on in a never ending twilight in the bright dimness of the enclosed hospital.

Steve has a seizure that evening. Bucky had been sitting next to him, holding his hand. He’d been singing, some old song Steve's mother used to hum: there had been no words left, no more promises or pleas to make - and Steve had always enjoyed when he’d sang. 

When the alarms had first shrieked, Bucky hadn’t connected what was happening right away, staring blankly at Steve’s jerking form. His brain kicked in a moment later and he was scrambling up, trying to get his arm over Steve’s chest, trying to keep him from ripping the fragile stitches holding his whole midsection together as doctors and nurses flooded in from the hall.

The seconds blurred together inside the never-ending panicked shriek of Bucky's brain. Hold him, protect his head, don't hurt him, keep breathing. Please, please don't leave me.

When it’s over, nurses stepping back and the ICU doctor wiping his forehead, Steve is pale and there’s a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. Bucky stares at it, denial warring with the clinical side of his brain. He knows what it is: the beginnings of a fever - the beginnings of the end. The doctor is shaking his head and Bucky feels like a flame was just doused inside of him. 

When he’s alone, Bucky lays a hand on Steve’s brow, feels the growing heat for himself. He doesn’t let himself think it, not yet. He manages a tuneless hum as he strokes Steve’s arm, hopes it reaches Steve wherever he is and comforts him. 

Just an hour later, he meets with the doctors in that same little conference room. Sam sits next to him, hand braced on his shoulder, steady and warm and constant. He already knows what they’re going to say - the signs are clear. 

“Dr. Barnes,” the doctor says and her voice is so infinitely gentle that Bucky has to bite his fist. 

Steve’s brain is swelling. His fever is rising. His one remaining kidney has failed and his liver is fast behind it. His bowels are infected. The damage to his heart and lungs isn't improving. It’s just a matter of time until the inevitable. Steve's life is now measured in hours, not years.

“He’s not in any pain,” the doctor reassures. “He won’t be in any pain. But, we need to discuss the future of his care.” She hesitates and Bucky can see her mulling over the words, picking and choosing each sentence carefully like she's navigating a thorny field. He's the thorny field. 

"The DoD has been working on some experimental procedures," she says at last, "new gene therapies designed to enhance the rate of healing. We have a facility out in New Mexico," she slides a pamphlet across the table. It's glossy and colorful, orange stone framing a brilliant sky with a modern looking hospital rising from a cliffside like mirage. “ZOLA Care and Research Facility" says bold white font across the top. It looks peaceful.

He clears his throat, swallows. "What are they working on?" he asks. "You probably... you know this is my field. I haven't seen this facility listed on any of the research."

"I'm afraid that's classified, Dr. Barnes. Needless to say, I can guarantee that Captain Rogers would be very well cared for." She smiles reassuringly for just a moment before her mouth flattens again. "Of course given the classified nature of the treatments and the security around the base, you would not be allowed to accompany him."

"That's not an option," Bucky says instantly. Maybe he should take longer to think about it, he wonders as soon as the words have popped out of his mouth. Maybe he should weigh his need to stay by Steve's side against Steve's chances for survival - but he shuts his mouth and lets his words stand. 

Steve, in his bullheaded stubbornness that had gotten him through a childhood of sickness and years of the army, always talked about trusting your gut. He believed that everyone knew what was right, somewhere deep down, and that every person had the right to do everything in their ability to follow that conviction. Bucky knew, with every fiber of his being, that any decision that separated him from Steve - any scenario where Steve was left to potentially die alone - was the wrong one. 

The sides of the doctor's mouth turn down sharply and her eyes go a little hard. "Dr. Barnes," she says. "You understand he'll die within hours otherwise. We can keep him comfortable but there's nothing we can do here to prolong his life much longer."

Bucky stands up, walks to the dark window, sliding Steve's wedding band up and down over the knuckle of his thumb. He can see his own reflection, the gold smears of streetlights and the rolling headlamps of cars on the distant road. The world is continuing to turn and his is ending. All he can see is Steve laughing: Steve standing in his studio, with bare feet and a dripping paintbrush in one hand. The canvas in front of him is a blur of blue and gold. Toby is at his feet and the sun is shining and Steve is laughing and so alive. 

He clears his throat and he sees futures, stretching before him in thick golden ribbons - all the different paths he could walk.

Steve dies in the hospital tonight, just a few hours from now: Bucky holds his hand up until the very end, makes sure he knows he's not alone. He says a last goodbye. It’s peaceful - Steve just slips away from one breath to the next. A good death. Bucky sits there, next to him, as the machines are turned off and a white sheet is drawn over the beloved face. He doesn't leave until they cart his body off to the morgue. Then, he goes back to his quiet house and hugs Toby. He lays in a big, empty bed and thinks of Steve lying alone on a cold coroner's table. There is a funeral the next week with an honor guard and a flag and a gun salute and Bucky sits with Sam next to him. Steve is buried next to his parents. Bucky goes back to his lab, maybe in two weeks or maybe a month. He wears Steve's dog tags around his neck. His colleagues look at him with pity. RB-32557 goes to human trials in a year. It gets approved by the FDA and thousands of lives are saved. Bucky’s name is on buildings, in textbooks. He visits Steve’s grave and waits to join him, because nothing really matters in a world where Steve isn’t by his side.

Or. Or. Or…

_God forgive me._

“I’m signing him out,” he says, not turning around. He takes his phone out of his pocket, shoots a text to Tony. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for him - but even you just said there's nothing else to be done for him here.”

“You can’t just…” the doctor stammers a little and Bucky sees a shadow of her reflection, pushing her glasses up her nose. “He’s not stable to be moved. He’d die…”

“There’s nothing more you can do,” he says again. He makes his voice firm, pictures Steve in his uniform, giving orders. Steve always had a way of making people listen and Bucky channels that now. “You’ve all done your best - but I know he’s dying and I'm not going to trust him to a facility I can't see. I know this is it. That’s why I need to take him.”

Her throat bobs and she exchanges looks with the other doctor. “I have to highly discourage this, Dr. Barnes. I know this is an incredibly difficult situation but…” her gaze drifts to Sam, looking for help.

Sam shakes his head, already standing up. “Don’t look at me. I’m following his orders now.”

“There will be forms to sign then,” she says. “You have to understand that we can’t advise…”

“Of course not. I'll sign whatever you need.” Bucky’s phone buzzes and he looks down. “We’ll have a helicopter from Stark Industries landing in twenty minutes. Sam?”

Sam nods to him. He hasn’t slept in longer than Bucky but he doesn’t seem weary - he seems almost relieved to be doing something. “I’m on it.”

Bucky rocks back on his heels. Is he making the right call? Maybe not - but Steve always said that when push came to shove, you stand up and keep fighting. 

The second time Bucky is on the helipad of the hospital, it’s bitterly cold with just the moon hanging overhead. Has it really only been 36 hours since he was last here? There are stars spreading out in all directions, blending with the distant lights of the city. The darkness beyond the lights feels infinite. 

It’s quieter now than it was the last time he had been up here. That time, there had been the flurry of doctors trying to save a life, the hope that something they could do would work if they just did it fast enough. There is none of that now. Just two orderlies have accompanied Bucky and Sam up to the helipad: the time for traditional medical intervention is over. Steve has been left with the bare minimum of life support equipment, tucked around him on every side. Most of the alarms have already been silenced - they all know his body failing. Thankfully, he hasn't had a seizure since earlier and he seems to be resting peacefully - Bucky made sure they'd given him enough morphine to keep him down for the trip. 

As they wait, Bucky puts his hand in Steve’s hair. It’s stiff and greasy and he scratches at the familiar scalp and paces his own breathing to the click hiss of the respirator. He wonders briefly what the doctors below are saying about him. 

Dr. Barnes: the eccentric scientist who is refusing to face the clear, cold facts of his husband’s imminent demise. In a profession that values adherence to hard truths, Bucky knows he’s lost some respect tonight. It doesn’t matter. 

Sam is next to him, hands tucked into his pockets. He's staring at the sky, like he can will the helicopter to come faster. Bucky feels a surge of gratitude as he watches him - he doesn’t know how he would’ve gotten through this without Sam’s unwavering support.

When the thump thump of the helicopter sounds in the distance, Bucky takes a deep breath. He's made his choice and now it's time to live with it. No turning back now. “Am I doing the right thing?” he asks, quietly as he smoothes his thumb over the shell of Steve's ear. It’s not fair, he knows, to be putting this answer on Sam - but he can't help himself.

Sam is quiet and then he touches Bucky’s shoulder. “Steve never doubts you,” he says, sounding so sure, even though his eyes are on Steve and not Bucky. “He wouldn’t be doubting you now.”

The helicopter lands with a whirl and it's a blur for awhile after that: loading Steve through the wide bay doors and getting him hooked to the onboard monitors while updating the medical team that Stark sent on his condition. They're all competent and reassuring and Bucky lets himself relax a little, lets himself believe he's made the right choice. Then, all there is left to do is say goodbye to Sam.

Sam offers his hand and Bucky leans past it, pulling him in tight. "Thank you for everything," he says, sincerely. "I don't know what we would've done without you."

"Don't sell yourself short." Sam clasps his shoulder. Then, at the last second, Sam leans past Bucky and lays his fingers on Steve's cold cheek, just above the respirator tube. His mouth is a thin line and his eyes are flinty as he stares at Steve for a long, silent moment. It's like the rest of the world has paused for him. 

Sam doesn't believe he's ever going to see Steve again, Bucky realizes and something in his heart breaks. 

"I'm sorry," he whispers as Sam steps back, eyes still snagged on Steve. "I wish..."

Sam nods briskly, finally tearing his gaze away from Steve to meet Bucky's eyes. There's no blame, just resignation. "Take care of him, Bucky. And yourself." 

As the helicopter lifts off, Bucky looks down once, at the dark cityscape, and Sam is standing in the circle of lights, still looking up. 

The labs at Stark Tower are breathtaking. If Bucky wasn’t on a couple hours sleep and clinging to his dying husband’s hand, he thinks he’d be like a kid in a candy shop. 

A full medical staff had greeted them as the helicopter landed, tugging Steve’s gurney away from Bucky’s hands and leaving him feeling bereft. 

Bruce Banner and Tony are waiting for him just inside the gleaming lab. Banner looks older than Bucky remembers from that lecture years ago - but that shouldn’t be surprising. 

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Bruce offers when they shake hands. He takes off his glasses and rubs the side of his face. “From what Tony tells me, he’s a good man.”

Bucky nods. He clears his throat of tears. 

Steve looks rough - even Tony looks subdued as the doctors transfer him from the gurney to the thick lab table. 

“You’re doing the right thing, Bucky,” Tony tells him. There are dozens of screens starting to spit out streams of data.

Bucky nods but he can’t take his eyes off of Steve. He does look significantly worse under the fluorescent glare of the laboratory - the hospital room had been dim and oddly lit from the machines and shadows. Bucky could pretend, almost, that Steve was just asleep. 

Here, every bruise is livid across his face. His face is washed down to milk, like he's already almost gone. The last hours have wasted the health and strength from his limbs and he looks more like that sickly kid of their youth than a soldier.

"I took the liberty," Stark says, waving his hands magnanimously like he's a grand director, "of having some of RB-32557 synthesized here." 

Bucky frowns. "You mean you stole some from my lab," he counters. "No way could you have synthesized that since last night."

Tony looks abashed. "We may have been synthesizing some for our own use for the last few months. We weren't stealing!" he hurries on when Bucky knows his face must've showed all his dismay. "We just wanted to see... it doesn't matter now. But we have some." He waves over at a large metal refrigerator with a glass front and Bucky sees test tubes, all lined up and sparkling the familiar blue of RB-32557. 

They'll need to have a discussion about this later - but there's no time for that now.

"Okay," Bucky shrugs out of the zip up sweatshirt he'd been wearing since yesterday morning and pulls at the hair tie on his wrist to scoop his hair back. "Let's do this."

Bucky's always loved science - loved the feeling of creating something from all these disparate parts. When he'd been a kid, it was volcanoes or silly putty from the stuff in his mom's cabinets. As an adult, things had gotten a lot more complicated - and not just in terms of the science.

Working within the bounds of medicine has always been a balancing act: tempering the scientific need to rush forward against the regulations put in place to protect patients, doctors, and scientists alike. Bucky is very aware, as he uses an pipet to put some RB-32557 onto a glass slide along with a tiny bit of Steve's blood, he could be very well ending his career as a scientist tonight. 

In some ways, it's heady to be stepping boldly into the unknown. But, like Bucky had told that guy in his office hours only days ago, there were reasons Bucky believed in the system. The system was there to protect people, because for every trial that cured people, there were trials that killed people.

If this goes wrong (or even if it goes right), he is flagrantly disregarding the protocols and bylaws of the system he has spent his life defending and trusting. If Steve dies, even if by no fault of the drug, it will be the end of any future trials of RB-32557. All the work he had done over the last years would be shelved without recourse. If Steve lives, there will be investigations and hearings and lawsuits. There will be years of inquiries and this would languish in courtrooms while good people died - and all of it will be Bucky’s fault for this moment of selfish ego. 

He can't think about any of that now. He has to focus. 

What becomes abundantly clear, just minutes into his initial tests, is that Stark and Banner had been right about the delivery system. At Bucky's labs, they'd been using standard protocols in thigh model tests and the drug had been working like they'd predicted. But, using Bruce's technology to allow the drug to hitch right to the root DNA, it is clear the power of the drug expanded by leaps and bounds. The stability of the compound is going off the charts, allowing it to continue working as it moves through out the different systems of the body and not deteriorating as it moves away from the delivery site as it had before. 

There are so many variables, hundreds of equations jamming their way through Bucky's brain as he runs the simulations. It feels like he is standing at the bottom of a tornado and the rush of the world is sucking all the air from his lungs. His eyes can’t view all the data fast enough. The serum seems to almost attack the sample stem cells, swallowing up and spitting them out and he can't tell if they're improved or destroyed. He rubs his eyes free of grit. He has to figure this out.

He thinks of Steve’s paintings - how they start as white canvas and grow to loops of colors and textures, spilling everywhere. Sometimes Bucky stares at them and sees just random patterns - but Steve can find the mystery hidden there. He needs Steve. Steve may not know science but nothing has helped Bucky overcome his own mental roadblocks like Steve’s warm presence. He doesn’t have that, though. This is one challenge he must overcome alone. 

Behind him, Banner and Stark are talking quietly and, past them, Bucky can hear the nurses and the doctors murmuring over Steve. It's all surreal.

In a perfect world, they'd have months and years to experiment, to test and tweak and isolate. They'd run simulations a thousand times before even getting near a human subject. Bucky could go home every night and talk it out with Steve and sleep in his arms and let the answer come to him in dreams. They'd have controls and toxicity screens. They'd have panels and reams of data to pour over. They’d develop a hundred analogs and get to pick the very best version of the drug for their first human trials.

Here, there is no such luxury.

Bucky does what he can. At first, they're using too much radiation and some of the root DNA mutates and dies before the RB-32557 kicks all the way in. He dials it back, tries adding in a fat soluble membrane, and targeting the bone marrow directly. He watches as the cells start mutating, spreading through the bloodstream, until his eyes blur. He doesn't have enough time. The serum is doing _something_ but he can't figure out if it's sustainable. Steve could survive the night and die in a week as his body warps out of control. He could survive and be fine for years and then end up dying from some out of control cancer caused by the mutations.

As dawn starts breaking over New York City, soft light breaking through the tinted windows of the lab and mellowing the harsh lighting into something golden, Steve's blood pressure begins to plummet even as his fever climbs anew. His own blood is poisoning him and his body is too weak to fight it off. He's not even moaning now, quiescent and pale. Almost gone, Bucky thinks bleakly.

It's now or never and Bucky's gone too far to give up without trying.

So, in the last moments before they begin, Bruce and Tony are bent over the giant machine Tony has constructed, making the final preparations, and Bucky sits beside Steve, stroking his hair.

"I've loved you," he tells him, leaning close to his ear like this is a secret. "I've loved you since before I knew what love was. I've carried you with me my whole life and I'll never stop. So don't give up now. We have so much to do together. Don't leave." He thinks of marrying Steve that day in the rain, taking tragedy and merging it with pure joy. He kisses Steve's dry cheek and his still mouth and squeezes his fingers. "I'm fighting for you so you fight now too."

He's the one that settles Steve into the delivery mechanism, resolutely not thinking about its resemblance to a coffin. Blue vials of RB-32557 are all set up to be simultaneously injected directly to the bone marrow of Steve's body while gamma radiation is applied through the use of Stark's machine, effectively giving a massive boost to the regenerative capabilities of Steve's cells, forever altering his DNA.

This has to work.

Bucky steps back, braces his hands on his hips, reaches deep inside himself past the worried husband and to the steady scientist. Courage, he thinks. Be brave.

"Okay," he says. "Okay."

The machine hums to life, closing around Steve, and Bucky turns away, directing his eyes to the readout screens. _Please, please, please_. 

Data starts spilling across the screen. He's at the height of the storm now and everything is roaring around him, too fast to even comprehend. His hands fly across the screen and he's barely aware of Stark mumbling beside of him. The noise from the machine increases, bright light washing the room.

In the midst of that chaos, though, Bucky latches on to one clear thread, like a shining beacon. He watches the serum move through Steve's blood stream, connecting to the stem cells and stimulating mitosis, increasing adrenaline production and multiplying the white blood cells. His blood pressure is stabilizing, his heart rate climbing, the toxicity in his blood clearing. It's like watching magic, a scientific fairytale, unfold in real time before his wondering eyes. Bucky feels breathless, rubbing Steve's wedding ring like a talisman.

It's working.


	6. Chapter 6

###  _Steve_

When Steve Rogers wakes up, he does so with a faint sensation of disbelief. When he closed his eyes in Venezuela, to Natasha's worried face, he'd genuinely not anticipated waking up again. So, to open his eyes and be, not only alive, but free of pain and medical equipment, seemed like something out of a different reality. 

He's not at home. The room is smaller and darker than their bedroom and the bed he's in is narrow, though comfortable. An IV stand is unused in one corner and a bedside lamp is shining, half orange and half gold. A painting hangs across from him, bland and generic but clearly expensive. He frowns. It's like an expensive hotel mixed with a hospital.

What happened?

He shifts in the bed. Nothing hurts - but he feels weirdly off center, like everything is just a step to the side than he expected. 

He remembers the mountains and the trees - the bright blue green flash of that strange alien light. He remembers the sensation of darkness and wind in his face and Bucky's voice coming across a great distance. 

Steve sits up.

"Good evening, Captain Rogers," a mellow, mechanical voice intones. There are no visible speakers or cameras and Steve's hands instinctively reach for something to defend himself with.

There's nothing. He's wearing pajama pants and a thin t-shirt, barefoot. On his left bicep, a round, blue medication patch is beginning to peel off. He yanks it off the rest of the way and gets to his feet, bare toes sinking into plush carpet.

"Where am I?" he says out loud to the disembodied voice. 

"You are safe," the voice tells him. "I've notified your doctors of your awakening. They will be here shortly."

Well, that's not very comforting. If he'd been injured, they'd have taken him to Walter Reed. Bucky'd be here. He'd be in the familiar sterile rooms of an Army hospital - not his favorite place, but at least expected. 

He's heard rumors, swarming just below the surface in the Pentagon, of wounded soldiers taken from their units and moved to secret bases in the desert, never to be heard of again. He'd never paid much attention but he'd filed the stories away. About a year ago, he'd been at a bar near Fort Bragg and a young sergeant had been 12 shots of whiskey in and rambling about a short little European doctor that had taken his buddy right from his hospital bed, carted him off in a fancy airplane and he'd never heard from him again. 

That wasn't going to happen to Steve - not when he had Bucky waiting for him. Unless...

He opens the drawer in the nightstand. Inside, there is a roll of bandages and some extra IV tubing. He grabs the roll, pulls off a long strand and wraps it around both hands. Not the best weapon, but he's had worse. He crosses the room and tries the handle of the door. It's locked.

"Captain Rogers," the mechanical voice says, "I sense you are in distress. I've been asked to tell you, again, that you are safe and..."

Steve backs up a step and kicks down the door. The hinges burst outward like the explosion of an overly ripe pumpkin and the wood splinters like cheap plastic. The metal door knob hits the opposite wall of the hallway with a bang, clattering to the floor and rolling on the tile floor.

Steve pauses. Kicking down doors is nothing new in his line of work, but that seemed a little bit excessive. 

No time for that. Someone shouts down the hallway and he turns the opposite way, sprinting down the taupe and mauve interior toward a sign saying "Stairs."

"Captain!" someone calls but Steve barrels ahead, not even slowing down as he approaches the wooden door. He can see, through a slim glass window, a stairwell beyond. He slams into the wood and feels the door pull free from its hinges beneath his shoulder, banging inward and spilling him into a dim stair landing. 

There are flights going up and flights going down. He hesitates, weighing his options, and then hears shouts from below. Up it is.

He takes the stairs three at a time, his legs feeling longer than normal. It must be the adrenaline. After the first two flights, he's not even breathing a little heavy. He skids around a landing and charges up the next flight. The voices below him are growing in number but he doesn't slow down.

Four flights. Six flights. He's sprinting up the stairs, now, taking each flight in three strides. Ten flights and he sees a sign saying "Roof." With a burst of speed, he leaps the last few steps and slams out the narrow doorway. 

He's on a high rise, wind whipping past his face and whistling across his ears. It's night, the world cast in shadows around him, low lighting circling the edges of the roof he's on. A helicopter is sitting on a helipad, engine off and no pilot. Steve charges toward it, only thinking about escape and freedom and Bucky, when the corner of his eye snags on a familiar skyline. He turns and the Chrysler Building is rising up, filling his vision. Beyond that, he can see Manhattan, stretching into a dark night sky. He can see the lights of the bridge and Brooklyn beyond that. 

New York. He's in New York. This isn't some secret facility in the desert.

His stride falters.

"Steve!" 

Bucky. The recognition of his voice goes straight to Steve’s chest, settling the urgency in his gut. Bucky's here.

He's right next to the helicopter but he doesn't move to get in, just turns in the direction of Bucky's voice. On the opposite side of the roof, Bucky is walking toward him, hands held up in supplication. Steve can see an elevator behind him, Tony Stark and another man Steve doesn't recognize waiting there.

Stark. Steve glances around, more details coming into focus. He's on top of Stark Tower. He recognizes the view. He and Bucky have landed on this very helipad for one of Stark's elaborate dinners.

"Steve, it's okay. I know this is confusing. But, Steve. You have to listen to me. It's okay. I promise, you're safe." Bucky is still walking toward him. His eyes are huge in his face. He's frightened, Steve realizes. Of what?

"Please," Bucky says and his voice almost breaks over the word. "Please. Steve, do you know who I am?"

What?

Steve shakes his head, confused. Of course he knows who Bucky is. 

In the dim light, though, he sees Bucky's face contort briefly in pain and then go carefully neutral. "That's okay," Bucky calls over the distance. He sounds hoarse, like he does when tears are building in the back of his throat - like he did the day of his parents’ funeral and he was trying so hard to be brave. "That's okay. I'm Bucky. I'm... I'm your doctor. You were severely injured and..."

The tears in his voice kick Steve into action. He crosses the roof toward Bucky, meeting him in the middle in a pool of yellow light from the elevators. "You jerk," he says fondly, lifting his hands to cup Bucky's face. "I didn't mean... of course, I know who you are."

Bucky sags against him, eyes closing from that wide eyed fear stricken gaze. "Oh, thank god. Steve. I was so scared." His arms wind around Steve's waist, pulling him tight. "Don't do that again. Never do that again."

Bucky feels smaller against him and Steve clings back to him. 

"What happened?" he asks. 

Bucky pulls back and his eyes are bright. "There was a mission - you got badly injured. But you made it," he says, satisfaction in his tone. "You survived. C’mon. We need to get you inside.”

Steve's never been to Stark's lab - but it's exactly like he anticipated: gleaming machines everywhere, fully stocked snack fridges and cupboards, and the faint air of superiority hovering over it all. 

"You should be thanking me, Terminator," Tony tells him as Steve sits on a lab table while Dr. Banner ("Call me Bruce," he'd said when they had shaken hands) runs some sort of handheld scanner over him. Steve feels like he's a piece of produce on the checkout counter of the grocery store. "Without me," Tony continues, "you'd be a zombie right now."

"A zombie?" Steve echoes, disbelievingly. 

"You'd be dead, is what I'm getting at."

"Tony," Bucky says, voice strained. "Let's not..."

"He's going to find out eventually," Tony argues. "Your hubby here used his super secret serum and I used my engineering genius and Bruce here used his radiation and wham bam. Do you feel any different?"

Steve frowns. "Taller?" he ventures, trying to catch Bucky's gaze. His husband keeps looking down though, studying a tablet he's holding. "And uh, stronger," he adds, remembering the door splintering into pieces with one kick. 

"Yep - we'll want to get you on the scale but an hour after the procedure, you weighed 205 pounds and I'd put you at 220 now. Solid muscle if the looks of your bicep are any indication." Tony punches his shoulder gently then shakes his hand out. "You're 6' 4" now too - you were what, 6’ even before?" 

"Yes," Steve says. He feels like he has whiplash. "What are you saying?"

"And, considering 12 hours ago you were moments away from dying from septicemia and having your organs pulverized by an alien weapon and now you're upright talking to us, I'd say we did our jobs right and you should be thanking me."

"Bucky?" Steve asks.

His husband looks up and Steve realizes, for the first time, how exhausted he looks. His face has new lines and deep shadows beneath his reddened eyes. His hair is lank around his face, tumbling heedlessly out of his sloppy ponytail. There's a small tremble in his hands and his mouth is strained in a way that Steve hasn't seen since right before his thesis defense. For a moment, he stares blankly like he's not sure what Steve is asking. Then, his gaze clears and Bucky sighs like he's out of options, reaching for Steve's hand.

"You were really sick, Steve," Bucky says. He's hoarse. "The doctors at Walter Reed... there weren't any options left. So I... so we. I made the decision. We - the three of us - we administered a treatment of the serum I've been working on at the school. The RB-32557?"

Steve nods. He's seen that in Bucky's notes, scribbled on papers all over their shared study at home. 

"We used gamma radiation to bind the compound to your DNA, in hopes that it would jump start the healing process. Give you a chance to survive. It’s… done more than that."

"We'll have to do more tests," Tony jumps in. "Stress tests, blood analysis. That sort of thing. See how much you can lift or how many times you can orgasm. But you're as healthy as a horse. Healthier. Imagine the healthiest person in the world and multiply it by a factor of ten. That's you right now."

"Is it permanent?" Steve asks. He feels a bit dazed - but he can trust Bucky, he knows that in his bones. So, if Bucky is telling him that there weren't any other options and that this was the best way, Steve believes him down to his core.

"So far," Bucky says. "And it should be. All initial tests indicate that your cells are stabilizing - but we should monitor closely to be sure. It hasn't even been 24 hours."

Bucky looks so out of sorts that Steve plasters on his best smile, leaning in close until he's resting his forehead on Bucky's shoulder. "I feel fine, Buck," he promises. "Okay? Like Tony said, I've never felt healthier." He turns his shoulders, grabbing Bucky's hand as he does so. "Thank you. All of you."

Tony preens. 

Bucky tries a smile and almost makes it. "I'm just glad you're okay. We'll need to stay here for awhile, just to make sure things settle. Your dog will be here in the morning - Tony sent a car for him. I knew you'd freak otherwise."

"Toby is coming?" Steve can't stop the genuine smile this time. "Don't even front, Buck. You know you love him too." He taps his foot on the ground. "Does Sam know? The rest of the team? I'll need to talk to Maria soon."

"Yeah," Bucky says. There's something odd in his tone that Steve hears right away, a tense undercurrent that makes his own hackles raise in response.

Bucky isn't meeting his gaze again and he shakes his fingers free of Steve's, reaching around to pull a monitoring screen closer. 

"Buck?" Steve tries. He always feels wrong-footed when he isn't in sync with his husband. He glances over at Tony and Bruce and finds them both studiously bent over laptop screens "Are you..."

"Do you mind if I draw some blood?" Bucky interrupts. "We'll need to do it every couple hours. Just as things stabilize."

"Yeah, of course." Steve holds out his arm as Bucky comes over with the tourniquet. "You can tell me, Buck," he says lowly, so only his husband can hear. "Whatever it is, you can tell me."

Bucky taps his inner elbow, studying Steve's veins with an intensity that's almost uncomfortable. "Everything's okay, Steve," he tells him. "Promise."

Steve does his best to believe him. 

###  _Steve_

Everything is not okay.

Stark gives them elegant, large rooms on the 56th floor of his building. They have panoramic views of the city and the medical floor is only a few seconds away by elevator. Their meals are all delivered by discrete staff and the TV seems to have access to every movie and TV show ever made. 

There's a gym on the 56th floor as well - one where Steve can work out and not be connected to about a thousand EKG lines and wires like he is upstairs in the small gym they've set up in the laboratories. He's exaggerating but, honestly, if Steve ever sees Tony Stark in a work out headband and jogging shorts while monitoring Steve's EKG again, it will be too soon.

Steve had spent almost the entire morning after he'd woken up in that tiny gym, running on a treadmill and increasingly high speeds while blowing into a tube to measure his lung capacity. He'd lifted all the weights they had and had moved onto trying to lift the solid metal lab table before Bucky had called a halt. He'd held his breath underwater and done so many push ups that he started getting seasick from the motion. 

At the end of it, Stark and Banner had been fairly bug-eyed with disbelief and Bucky had been downcast, chewing on his lip as he stared at his screen. Steve didn't know how he felt: overwhelmed, definitely. 

Pepper had arrived the next morning and Steve had seen her eyes widen in amazement and maybe fear when she saw him before she tamped it down into a warm smile. She'd hugged him tightly and he had found that he could now tuck her entire head underneath his chin, even when she was in heels. 

It was hard to think past the magnitude of what had happened to him to get at any real emotions. Steve's a soldier: it's been in his marrow even before he arrived at boot camp, scrawny and eager. A part of him can't help but clinically cataloging his newfound abilities and thinking of what an asset they'd be in the field. 

He can run ten miles in under 45 minutes with no discernible strain. He can lift the equivalent of a car and leap almost twelve feet in a single bound. In hand to hand combat, he'd be close to unstoppable, he thinks. He’s 6’ 4” now and almost 230 pounds - something Steve could previously only dream at even with his rigorous work out schedule. 

His vision is better too. The first morning he tried to put his contacts in, it was instantly obvious that his prescription was no longer accurate - he'd almost seen double until he'd taken them out. His hearing was drastically improved and his metabolism was functioning at inhuman rates.

Part of the reason he'd been alone in the room when he'd first woken up was that they'd given him enough sedative to keep him under for at least 14 hours after the procedure. He'd woken up in less than four hours.

If this lasted, Steve knew he'd be easily the most physically capable soldier in the world. He’s been itching to get on a training course or a gun range and see what he can do.

Another part of him is just concerned about Bucky.

In the labs, Bucky is focused, clinical, exacting. He's everything Steve remembers from the grad school days and more. He throws himself into his tests and data like a man possessed, barely lifting his head to eat or drink or smile at Steve.

When he's not in the labs, though, he's fairly plastered to Steve's side, wrapped around him like an octopus on the couch or pressed completely against him when Steve takes Toby for walks in the rooftop gardens. 

At night, Bucky clings to Steve like he's afraid he's going to be snatched away. He's paranoid, not letting Steve answer the door when the staff comes with their meals and checking in on Steve every few minutes while he's in the gym.

He also won't let Steve leave Stark Tower.

"It's just not a good idea," he says, not meeting Steve's eyes. "We're not sure about the serum's long term effects..."

"I'm not talking about running a marathon in Alaska," Steve tells him, starting to feel a bit exasperated. "I'm talking about walking a couple blocks to a Starbucks and getting a coffee."

"One of the staff..."

"I know one of the staff could get me one. I want to get myself a coffee. I want to take a walk." Steve sighs, pushes his hand over his face. "Buck, I get it. I can't imagine what you went through. If you were," he swallows, even the thought making ash fill his stomach. "If you were dying and everyone told me to say goodbye, I would've done anything to save you and I would've been a mess. But you didn't lose me. You're not going to lose me."

Bucky wraps both arms around his own stomach, like he’s holding in a terrible truth. "I just... not yet, Steve. Please. Just not yet."

So, Steve hasn't left. It's been six days since the treatment and Steve has been confined to the upper floors of Stark Tower. He's starting to feel like a captive, coddled prince. He tries to stay positive. 

Toby seems unaware Steve’s body is any different, plodding happily by Steve’s side during walks and playing tug a war with the same ferocious intensity as always. 

Steve catches up on all the movies he’s missed on missions and all the TV shows he got behind on. He finds a series of Rosetta Stones and starts teaching himself French, lining up Farsi and Russian behind that. He rubs Bucky’s shoulders when he looks tense and brings him tea up in the labs. He tries. 

On the seventh day, he makes his way to Tony's private workshop while Bucky is buried in his laptop. 

"I need you to be straight with me," Steve says when he sits down on a lab stool across from him.

Tony looks up, cocks a brow. He's in a long sleeve t-shirt with grease stains spread across the sides like Tony's wiped his hands on it repeatedly. "Okay, I'll put away the lube - but I'll tell you: Pepper is fine with it as long as we film it for her."

Steve ignores him. "Do I need to be concerned around Bucky?"

"Why are you asking me about your husband?"

"Because this is a science thing. This is more your wheelhouse than mine. And you were there when... when I was unconscious. I need some of these missing pieces filled in." Steve crosses his arms. "I've kept your secrets for years, Tony. C'mon. You owe it to me."

Tony looks down, flipping a wrench in one hand. His other hand comes up to his chest, rubbing that spot where he used to have shrapnel. "Remember how Pepper was," he says quietly, "when she found out about Iron Man?"

Steve swallows, the words instantly taking him back in time. "I remember," he confirms. His gaze goes, unbidden, to the thick steel doors at one end of the lab. Hell, he remembers the first time that he saw Iron Man. He'd been 22, fresh out of college, newly married, and grieving his mother when aliens had suddenly appeared in the sky over Manhattan. Steve had watched in horror and mounting awe as the military had been rallied and led by a man in a red and gold mech suit that the news channels had later named "Iron Man."

He'd walked into a recruiting office a day later, signing up to fight the next threat. Throughout his career, he'd tracked the exploits of Iron Man, equally impressed and irritated by the secretive figure. 

Then, on one of his first ops as part of Strike Command, he’d been tasked to guarding Tony Stark on some secretive errand in Jordan. His first impression of the man hadn’t been great. 

But, when their convoy had been ambushed just a few clicks from the Iraqi border, Stark had come through. Iron Man had materialized from a dark leather briefcase and Tony had fought alongside Steve to get themselves out of a very sticky situation. 

A strange friendship had grown out of that moment. As one of the few people who knew Tony's secret, Steve thinks the other man needed someone to talk to a lot of the time.

Then, last year, some terrorist organization had figured out Tony’s secret identity and had blown up Stark’s house in Malibu. Steve remembers how his heart had pounded in his chest when he’d seen the news. Thankfully, Tony had been alright and the terrorists had been dispatched and Iron Man’s true identity remained a secret… to everyone but Pepper Potts, that is. She'd been afraid - that's what Steve remembers the most. Not of Tony - but of the realization that the man she loved was putting himself into greater and greater danger with every passing day.

Steve's never been privy to all the details but he knows that after, Tony had destroyed all his suits and vowed never to go out again. Pepper was more important to him than being a hero, he'd told Steve.

Tony watches him think it through. "Your husband had made his peace with you being a soldier. Now, we've given you a body that can do everything you did before and also ten times more. He doesn't know what it means and suddenly he has to grapple with the idea that you are going to be out there pretending you're actually invincible. This isn't like Iron Man - you can't push a button and go back to how you were. This is your life. He feels responsible and he's scared. You need to just be there for him. Let him work through this."

Steve presses both hands to his mouth. He stares at the sleek metal table until his eyes star blurring. "Anyone ever tell you your pretty smart?" he asks at last.

"I hear I'm a genius. It's kind of my thing." Tony flips the wrench the air, catches it in his palm. 

"Thanks, Tony." Steve gets up to leave and then pauses. "Do you ever regret it? Giving up Iron Man? No one ever knowing it was you?"

Tony doesn't look up from whatever he's working on to answer. "Go make sure your husband eats lunch, Rogers."

###  _Bucky_

"Can I interrupt?"

Bucky jerks a little from where he's bent over his microscope, sitting up suddenly at the voice right in front of him. He brushes his hair back from his face and sees Pepper standing in front of him.

She's dressed in a cream suit and looks as put together as Bucky feels like he's fallen apart. 

"Of course, Pepper. Hi. I'm sorry. I didn't hear you come in." He sits back and scrubs both his hands over his face, trying to push the grit out of his eyes. 

"You've been working really hard," she notes as she sits down next to him, folding one leg over the other. Her long manicured fingers rest on the table, looking out of place next to Bucky's hands with the fingernails bit down to the quick and the scars from childhood. 

“No rest for the wicked,” he says, going for self deprecating. 

“Tony says you’re not sleeping well,” she says gently and then laughs a little. “And when Tony says that...”

Bucky manages a smile. “There’s just a lot to do.”

“Tony also tells me that Steve is worried about you.”

That catches him and Bucky feels a swoop in his stomach. “He doesn’t understand.”

“No,” Pepper agrees quietly. She pauses and Bucky can almost see her collecting her thoughts. “I know...” she begins and then sighs. “There are so many similarities between you and Tony. But, I think when it matters, you and I are very similar. We have these infuriating men who think that they’re invincible. You and I... well, we’re realists. We take the world as it is and we know that good people lose just as easily as bad people. We also put a lot of faith and value in institutions - in procedures. We want the systems to work with us while they have no problem flouting that if it doesn’t suit their needs.”

Her hand drifts across the table and she taps the stack of research. “I know it’s scary to suddenly find yourself on the opposite side of all these people you respected and these institutions you admired because you broke the rules. I would feel the same. But, try to keep hold of the big picture. Steve is alive. He’s okay. Whatever happens tomorrow, you both will face it together - and that’s really all that matters.”

_End of Part 1_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes Part 1 of Only the Courageous. Thank you for reading along thus far! Trust me - there is a lot more to go so I'd love if people stuck around.
> 
> My July is going to be VERY busy so posting will be a little sporadic for the next few weeks but I will do what I can. Thankfully, there's not any big cliff hangers for, oh, at least two chapters ;) I'm making progress on the ending, though. I'm hopeful I can complete it in the next few weeks and maybe speed up posting in August. This could go up to 16/17 chapters depending on how a couple things come out in the writing. 
> 
> Thank you so much for commenting and kudosing and subscribing or just reading along! This fic was so much fun to write and I like sharing that with others.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part II**

###  _Steve_

“Is my team worried about me?” Steve ventures on the morning of the eleventh day when Bucky is hunched over and hanging away at his laptop’s keyboard.

Banner had left to return to India the day before, saying so long in the city surrounded by people wasn't good for his nerves. Bucky had taken it stoically enough, but Steve thinks he can see the lines around his eyes getting tighter and tighter.

Bucky looks up and then cuts his gaze away. "I texted Sam," he says. "Told him you're stable. He wants to visit."

Steve sits up straight from where he'd been slumped on the couch. "Buck. My team doesn't know what happened to me?”

"They can't know, Steve!" The words burst out of Bucky like a crack. He slams his laptop shut. "Don't you get it?"

Steve opens his mouth and then closes it. He clearly doesn't.

Bucky runs his hands back through his hair. It's longer and jagged, the ends looking dried out like Bucky hasn't been taking his usual care with it. "What I did, Steve," Bucky says, his voice quiet again. "What I did was at best ethically questionable and at worse, illegal."

Steve frowned. "It was your research."

"That doesn't matter! There are rules! And there are rules for a reason! I can't just go around performing human experiments on people because I want to. When the FDA and the NIH investigate, not to mention, the university, they’re going to cancel the trial and maybe even press charges.” Bucky stops, closed his eyes, like the enormity of his own words is just sinking in. “I don’t regret it. Never think that. I would do it all over again - but I have to salvage what I can. I have to. Not just for me. Steve - you should’ve died and you didn’t. I've tried duplicating it on mice for the past week and I can't. I have to figure out what we did. I have to figure out what made you special before they take this all away from me. This will change the world.”

Steve stares at him. He sees the boy in the schoolyard and the sleep deprived grad student and the passionate scientist. He sees his husband on their wedding day, on a rainy day in Brooklyn just hours after his mother had died. “I love you,” he says. “No matter what. I don’t care if we have to flee the country and live in a fucking embassy like Snowden. No one will take you away from me.”

Bucky’s mouth cracks into a brilliant smile, the sun on a stormy day. “You,” he says fondly, so much meaning imbued into that one word as his eyes crinkle. “I don’t think it’ll come to you fighting off the entire US government for me - but thank you for the offer.” He reaches out, takes Steve’s hand. “I love you too.”

He leaves shortly after that: back to the lab, he says with an unhappy twist in his mouth.

Steve watches him go. For the next couple hours, he tries to work off the energy tingling beneath his skin in the gym. When that fails, he wrestled with Toby.

Around noon though, he can’t take it anymore. He’s not good at staying still. He’s not good at letting someone else solve a problem while he sits on the sidelines. He doesn’t stay down well. He’s vibrating out of his skin.

On Google, he figures out there’s a Japanese bakery a few blocks away with that fluffy cheesecake Bucky loves. It’s not far. He can be back long before dinner. It’ll be a nice surprise.

Toby stares at him balefully as he pulls on his shoes and grabs his keys.

“I know,” he tells the dog, his own guilt written in the dog’s liquid eyes. He passes a hand over the dog’s head. “I’ll be right back. He won’t even miss me.”

The air’s crispness is mellowing out into early spring since he’d last been walking in the US. It's not a particularly lovely day - no one is out for a stroll, everyone is hurrying on their own trajectories toward destinations. No one pays him any mind as they bustle around him.

He’s missed this. New York has a distinctive hum that’s missing from DC and every other city that Steve has cooled his heels in over the course of his life, It vibrates in his bones like a familiar song. The sameness makes him feel the differences more acutely.. He sticks his hands in his pocket and keeps his head down. Out here, out of the careful confines of the lab and Tony’s rooms, his new size feels lumbering and clumsy. He takes up space unexpectedly and finds himself cringing into himself as he knocks into bags and shoulders, absorbing the annoyed glares of the pedestrians. It’s like his growth spurt in college all over again and Steve slouches into himself, hunching inward to shrink himself into his previous shape.

He's so absorbed in making himself unobtrusive that when the caravan of black SUVs with diplomatic plates starts rolling by, he barely notices. It's common enough in New York that it doesn't attract undue attention from anyone around him either.

Then, a large trash truck plows across through the red light of the intersection and slams into the lead SUV and the normalcy of the day is shattered.

The SUV screeches and flips, spinning into oncoming traffic on the other side of the intersection. It lands on its top and skids several yards, shuddering against the asphalt. For just a moment, Steve thinks it's a tragic accident - a garbage truck driver distracted by a text or broken brakes. In the corner of his eye, he can already see people pulling out their phones to dial 911.

It’s only a moment later, though, when a heavily armored vehicle screeches to a stop in the middle of the intersection, in front of the stopped SUV. Steve hears another bang and turns just in Time to see a moving truck slam into the rear SUV in the convoy, shoving it forward until it collides into the SUV in front of it with a spark filled screech.

This is exactly what Steve would do if he was staging an ambush. The middle SUV is tightly pinned now, wedged between the trash truck and the other SUV with the moving truck behind it. The hood is dented from where it couldn't stop fast enough to avoid colliding with the broadside of the trash trunk when it barreled into the first SUV. The engine is faintly smoking in a way that doesn’t speak well of its ability to just drive away. Through the spiderweb cracks on the front windshield, Steve can see the blurred outline of the driver, shaking his head as if in shock.

This was no traffic accident.

Armed men, head to to in black, are jumping from the armored vehicle and the trash truck. All of their faces are covered by masks and in their hands is large weaponry that has no place on a New York street. One of them fires his AR-15 into the air and the burst of gunfire is like a shockwave on the busy street, people dropping to the ground for cover in rippling waves as the sound echoes between the buildings. Another masked man jumps to the roof of a parked yellow cab, pulling something out of a dark duffle.

Steve ducks as people flee around him, eyes fixed on the revealed weapon as his focus narrows. He recognizes the weird angles and curves instantly. The world blurs from the streets of Manhattan to a shed in the Venezuelan mountains, the blue glow and the pain around his middle and knowing he was dying. More Chiutari weaponry. He sucks in a breath and shakes his head, trying to refocus.

The guy is setting up the alien weapon on some sort of stand, pointing it in the direction of the middle SUV.

People are screaming, ducking for cover inside shops and subway tunnels. The cars that piled up behind the convoy after the accident have been abandoned, doors hanging open and lights blinking. Bags and packages and umbrellas are left behind, brightly colored casualties as their owners flee. Steve scrambles behind a trash can - he should be following the civilians, he knows. He doesn't have a weapon.

Six men stalk toward the middle SUV. It's clearly well armored - bullets won't work and a grenade probably won't make a dent, at least not before NYPD shows up. The alien weapon might vaporize everything inside as far as Steve knows but they’re not using it. This is a kidnapping - not an assassination, Steve decides. A smash and grab. It's ballsy - whoever planned this is relying on brute force and speed to accomplish their goals.

The six men have surrounded the car now, flanking all sides in a formation that is old hat to Steve. They're clearly pros. They move just like one of the Strike teams. One man slides underneath the car on his back.

Smart, Steve thinks distantly. They wouldn't be able to pull a person out through there but they probably could get an injection of some sort of toxic gas into the cab of the SUV - they'll smoke them out. Eventually, the need to breathe will outweigh the safety of the car and the occupants will be forced to open the doors. In between a slow painful suffocation and the risks of street combat, anyone would choose the latter.

Steve looks around. The civilians have disappeared from the street, leaving it eerily empty. The overturned SUV is beginning to burn, flames jumping out the exposed under carriage. No one has moved from its cab. In the distance, he can hear sirens - they won't be here in time. He wonders if they had planned a distraction on the other side of the city, something to pull all the NYPD away from this area before they struck. For a bright spot, he hasn't been spotted by the team yet - or if he has, he's been written off as another scared bystander.

That will be the mistake that undoes them, he thinks grimly.

There's a manhole just next to the trashcan, heavy iron that's rusted to a reddish brown with age. "N.Y.C. SEWER" is emblazoned across its circular face. It will have to do. Four heavy bolts secure it but Steve wedges his hand into the indents on either side and tugs. His new muscles flex and strain and then there's a screeching pop as the metal comes free.

The noise makes the men turn to him but Steve is ready for that. The first priority is that alien weapon. Steve had a glimpse of what it could do in that camp and he the last thing he wants is a repeat demonstration in the middle of Manhattan. With a shout, Steve swings the heavy metal disc in front of him like a battering ram and sprints across the intersection toward where the alien gun is set up. He has the element of surprise and super human speed so he's almost to the gunner before the first pops of bullets go off around him. He feels a familiar burn across the back of his calf but he doesn't slow down.

Steve can see the gunner's eyes widen even as he swings the alien weapon around to aim at Steve and blue green light jumps from its ugly snout. The manhole cover shudders and jerks in Steve’s hands as it absorbs the energy, but it holds, even as Steve can feel the metal heat against his fingers. The world around him goes bright as the eerie glow bounces off the shield, turning almost supernova. His muscles strain against the pressure as he keeps running forward.

He takes a deep breath and then he leaps. He lands, feet planted on the flat trunk of the cab and then propels himself onto the roof, swinging the metal manhole cover so that it slams into the back of the gunner's skull. He feels the helmet give and something crunches, the gunner crumpling immediately.

He swings the manhole cover around, curling behind it as best he can as a hail of bullets come toward him. The cast iron shudders and jerks in his hands, cracks starting to appear spidered through the old metal. Around the side, he sees the white smoke of whatever toxic gas had been used beginning to push against the windows of the SUV - whoever is inside will need to get out soon.

On the other side of him, he sees the driver of the armored truck getting out, another ugly looking alien gun in his hands. He’s going to try to pin Steve between the guys at the car and himself - catch him in an avoidable hail of crossfire.

His brain clears, that sweet crystal sharpness that only comes when adrenaline and imminent death collide. He sucks in a deep breath. With a wrench of his shoulders, he throws the manhole cover like a giant frisbee toward the armored truck. It's unwieldy and it wobbles but the course stays true and Steve catches a flash of the driver's mouth opening in horror before the cover slams into him, knocking him back against the truck door. The cover gives up the ghost, shattering like glass into metal shards. The man doesn't get up, lying in the metal shards.

The NYPD sirens are getting closer and the remaining men have ducked behind the armored SUV, popping off shots.

A movement of the handle of the SUV door catches Steve’s attention. It jerks and then the passenger door side spills open, yellow, noxious smoke pouring out as as a suited man topples from the cab, landing on his knees. The guy is hacking, throwing up, hands pressed against his face. He doesn’t see that one of the remaining masked men is crouched just feet away behind a car door, ready to fire.

Steve abandons the alien weapon - he can't fire if he could accidentally hit anyone. He leaps from the car, crossing the intersection in long quick strides as the other doors of the SUV start to open.

"Stay down," Steve shouts, and vaults over the hood of the car, using his entire body weight to slam into the attacker crouched behind the car door. He grabs the back of his head and slams him forward into the side of the SUV with a crunch.

Steve spins and catches one of the men in the side of the head with a kick as he’s about to fire his weapon. He goes down soundlessly, gun clattering to the pavement.

The last few guys turn tail and run, three jumping into a black mustang that Steve hadn't spotted and speeding away. The last one heads straight for an alley filled with clustered civilians. Shit.

Steve glances around for a weapon. After a split moment of hesitation, he rips the rear view mirror from the SUV and hurls it across the intersection at the guy’s head like a football. The black mirror spirals through the air, flashing a little in the afternoon sun before it connects with the back of his head and the guy goes down.

A blue and white NYPD squad car squeals to a stop next to Steve, siren wailing. Just in time.

Steve ignores the arrival, rounding the SUV. The occupants are still on their knees, throwing up, eyes streaming. Two men and a woman. They’re all well dressed, polished in that way the very wealthy and successful are.

Steve goes to a crouch, taking off his jacket and offering it to them to wipe their face. "It's okay," he says, "the police are here and..."

There's an abrupt shout, a masked man springing up from where he'd been ducked behind the garbage truck. His arm pulls back and he lobs something in their direction. Steve watches as a black grande rolls to land right at his feet.

Steve hears a spurt of gunfire at a distance but it's all secondary. His vision narrows to just the grenade, pin pulled. They have maybe 10 seconds. In battle, he'd scoop it up and throw it as far his arm would go - here in New York, when he'd just be tossing it into a group of scared tourists?

Steve snatches up the grenade, cradles it to his stomach with both hands, and jumps to his feet. This better work. "Cover your head," he orders and sprints across the intersection and away from where they’re crouched.

The grenade is warm in his hands, seconds stretching out into hours as he counts down in his head. Just ahead of him, the armored truck looms, empty now with its back doors hanging open to reveal the dark interior cab. He pulls his arm back and chucks the grenade as hard as he can, throwing it through the open doors and into the back of the truck. He reaches the truck himself a moment later, grabbing both doors and slamming them shut. He leans into them with his whole new body and thinks: _Please. Please. Please._

The grenade explodes.

The force of the blast blows the doors open again, lifting Steve clear off his feet and hurtling him backwards. He gets his arms up, trying to curl around and protect his head and his neck. Heat blasts across him and when he hits the asphalt with his left shoulder, he tumbles, the rough street shredding his shirt with the force of his impact and the wind knocked out of him. He ends up face down, arms over his head as explosion fades to just the noise of rushing flames as he fights to get his lungs working again. It reminds him of being a kid with asthma and the disconnect between that memory and breadth of his new body is disconcerting.

Car alarms are shrieking around him now and he can hear more sirens: ambulances and firetrucks and more cops. Oxygen is coming in small sips to his lungs slowly and Steve's brain is puttering off of the adrenaline rush, easing back into normal functioning.

Bucky. Steve swallows down a groan. Oh god. There's no way Bucky's not going to know he left the tower now.

He hears footsteps and someone crouches next to him. With some effort, he pushes himself up and stares into the face of one of the men from the SUV.

"You saved our lives," says the man, his English accented softly. He's younger than Steve with kind eyes and shortly cropped hair. His suit, though streaked with dirt and vomit, is well tailored. He sits back on his haunches as Steve wavers on his knees. Is his face vaguely familiar? "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Steve shrugs, the pain from his injuries beginning to settle against his bones. "You okay?"

"I am fine," the man says. He offers his head and they both stand together. "And yourself?"

"Cuts and bruises." Steve looks down at their clasped hands and registers the insignia on the man's gold cufflinks: a black panther with its jaw agape in a roar. Wakanda. An image of the newspaper that had been left at their door yesterday morning appears in his mind eye. The crown prince had been visiting New York for some sort discussion at the UN. A border dispute? Something about black market arms dealers? The details of the article blur but Steve can see the picture clearly and it matches the face of the man standing next to him now.

His mouth goes dry and he swallows with a audible click. "Your highness," he gets out, a little raspy over the smoke he had inhaled. Steve steps back and wonders if he should bow. There has to be a protocol but his mind is blank. He doesn’t know much about Wakanda.

T'Challa nods, straightening his shirt sleeves. He manages to look regal even now.

"Sir," the woman from the SUV is approaching, her gaze skimming over Steve brusquely and he stands up straighter under the force of it. "We need to get you to the embassy immediately. T'shan will stay behind to give a statement to the police."

"Of course." T'Challa steps away as a police officer approaches. "Thank you again."

Steve nods and watches him walk away before turning to the police officer. "You need my statement?"

It takes over an hour, between getting checked out briefly by the paramedics and giving his statement. By the time Steve gets to the paramedics, though, most of his injuries look hours old and they just stare in confused befuddlement before letting him go.

Either way, it's dark by the time Steve rather sheepishly walks back into Stark Tower. He'd gone to the Japanese bakery and bought a whole cheesecake. At this point, both he and Bucky deserve it, he figures.

Stark's AI butler greets him as soon as he gets into the elevator. "Welcome back, Captain. Dr. Barnes is waiting for you in your suites."

Steve winces. Time to face the music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh after an insane July, I'm back! 
> 
>  
> 
> The good news is that this fic is now complete! Just needs plot nitpicking and some revisions so posting will be fairly smooth from here on out. I've absolutely loved the comments and kudos I've gotten so far so thank you! Hope you enjoy this chapter as well... from here on out, things start moving fast.


	8. Chapter 8

###  _Bucky_

It’s been trending for three days now and Bucky needs to stop clicking on the links whenever they pop up - but he can’t. He's tried. He should be up at the lab, peering down the microscope and trying to figure out how the serum works. He should be synthesizing and documenting and preparing a defense for the FDA and the NIH - yet, he can't pull himself away from YouTube.

When the first gunman had fired his machine gun into the air, PhilzWhilz87 had taken out his iPhone and started recording. He'd ducked into the bodega on one of the corners, hidden himself partially behind a rack of magazines and cigarettes. As the camera jostled, the bright cover of People magazine, proclaiming that some starlet had married some short European, wavered in and out of the screen. 

Despite that, the video got more of the action and had a better angle than all of the other angles that had popped up on Youtube within hours of the incident. It has almost six million views. 

On Day Two, someone even made a remix: Steve running across the intersection with the bullets clanging off the manhole cover set to Bonnie Tyler wailing "I Need a Hero."

"He's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast and he's gotta be larger than life," she sings as Steve throws the grenade into the armored truck and slams the doors. Even Bucky has to admit that it's well done. 

By the time, Steve had gotten back to Stark Tower, Bucky had already seen the footage of the entire incident. 

He'd discovered Steve missing about an hour before and had promptly freaked out. Tony had run facial recognition and immediately hit on footage from the traffic cam in the now infamous intersection. It had been from the wrong angle and blurry - but Bucky had seen Steve tumbling gracelessly backward from the blast and his heart had gone into his throat.

Then, Steve had come through their door, singed and bruised and carrying a huge cheesecake, and Bucky had wanted to be so mad. It was fruitless, though. Steve was alive and safe and Bucky really did love the Japanese cheesecake. 

After he'd eaten a large portion, he'd sat Steve down on their couch and gone over every bruise and every cut. It had been amazing. They'd been functioning under the assumption that the serum had been a one time super boost. Steve's wounds, though, had been healing at an astonishing rate: there was a deep scab along his calf that could only be from a bullet graze but it looked over a week old just hours later. 

Somehow, Steve had faced down eight gunmen on a busy Manhattan street and had come away from it with only a few healing scrapes. 

That would've been it: Steve took a shower and Bucky took some blood samples to bring up to the lab later and tried to pretend he wasn’t married to a man who thought it was a good idea to pick up a grenade with his bare hands.

But, that evening, some local news channel picked up the Youtube video and pulled the police report, which listed Steven G. Rogers as the man with the manhole cover. Someone else at the news station then found a picture of Steve when he'd been promoted to Captain, grim faced but still breathtakingly handsome in his dress uniform and cap, and put it side by side with Steve holding the manhole cover. “New Yorker saves Prince of Wakanda" had said the news ticker beneath the anchor and that had been that: it had gone from a local human interest story to a national sensation in what felt like hours. Some news anchor coined the nickname "Captain America" and suddenly, everywhere Bucky turned, Steve's face stared back at him with that moniker emblazoned underneath.

("Captain what?" Steve had asked incredulously. 

"Captain America," Tony explained, almost gleeful. "Like Miss America. Because you're tall, blonde, and handsome and your talent is apparently throwing sewer caps. They just need to check you out in a swimsuit to make it official. I personally think it's perfect.")

Sam had been the first one to call and Bucky had taken his shouts over the phone before passing it to Steve. Steve had taken the phone into the bedroom - and when he had come back, Sam had been on speaker to apologize to Bucky. 

Maria texts Steve the moment she sees the story, grateful he's alright but also angry she hadn't heard sooner. 

("Are you coming back?" her little blue text bubble read and Bucky sees Steve staring at it, fingers still on the keyboard). 

The brass calls and reads Steve the riot act for not reporting back to SHIELD the moment he was conscious, for running around city streets and conducting ops without back up, for having his face splashed all over the US when he's supposed to a member of an elite unit that _doesn't exist_. It seems to be taken care of easily enough: Stark has one of the doctors on his payroll (who also works at Mass Gen) call over and explain that the treatment Captain Rogers received is still unstable and he's in need of constant monitoring and "no, sir, Captain Rogers won't be stopping anymore kidnapping attempts of foreign dignitaries any time soon." 

Stark says it’s taken care of but Bucky knows, though, it's only a matter of time before more people start asking questions, questions that will mean the end of his career and the end of all of his research. Everything he loves and everything he’s built will be snatched away from him by the very institutions he’s spent his life defending. It makes his stomach twist into knots. 

All of that, however, fades away in the face of Bucky’s true terror and it’s one he can barely even bring himself to speak out loud. 

No matter how many times he runs the numbers, he can't duplicate what the serum had done to Steve. He’s tried every variable he can think of, and more that Banner has come up with, to no avail. Sometimes, the serum is ineffective. Sometimes, it’s too effective and mutates wildly out of control. It’s unstable and finicky and terrifying. 

Bruce and he have isolated a Gamma radiation signature, very faint, but still present inside Steve. It’s not something that matches anything that would’ve come from Bruce’s delivery system or RB-32557, which leaves the weapon that was used on Steve. The problem is, the signature matches no known weapon - even the classified Pentagon files on the Chitauri weapons that Bucky is _not_ going to ask how Tony got his hands on. No matter what they do, they can’t recreate that specific signature - they can’t even possibly create a model of what effect it had on the serum. 

If he can't duplicate it, he can't study it. If he can't study it, he can't determine what's going to happen to Steve as the serum lingers on in his body. He still wakes up every single morning and expects Steve to have died in the night next to him. He just can't figure out how the serum stabilized inside of Steve, healing him but not killing him. 

He's prepared himself for a 100 worst case scenarios: Steve's heart giving out, his kidneys ceasing to function, tumors growing all over his body, his nervous system failing. He's been keeping epinephrine in his pocket since that first day, just in case he has to jump start Steve's heart of Steve collapses in front of him. It was bad enough when Steve was always just feet away from him - but now that Steve has figured out what this body can do for him in the field?

Bucky feels like he's balancing on the knife's edge, just a breath from toppling into a situation from which there's no recovering. So, he clings. He clings to Steve, clings to his research, clings to the videos - makes his mind focus on a 100 things besides the inevitable that is barreling down on him.

He's done what he can. Tony sent a few people to covertly pack up as much of Bucky's lab as they could - bringing what was left of RB-32557 and a few other projects he'd been working on back to Stark Tower. He'd contacted his Dean back before news of Steve had broken and asked for an extended sabbatical - he'd filed the paperwork two days ago. All that's left is for him to make the scientific breakthrough of the century and keep his husband alive in the process. Easy peasy.

Bucky is just about to hit play on the "I need a hero" remix for the second time that morning when Steve comes out of their bedroom, phone in his hand. 

He looks a little blank, eyes wide, and sits down heavily in the chair next to Bucky at the kitchen table. "That was Maria," he says. "They want to meet with me. Tomorrow. They're coming here. Pierce. Maria. Some other people I didn't recognize." Steve puts both hands on the table, palms flat. "I don't know what they want?"

Bucky swallows and his brain spins, thinking of the doctors at Walter Reed. Another fear suddenly appears, leap-frogging his other concerns to the forefront of his mind. It hadn't occurred to him until this very moment that SHIELD would want to also get their hands on Steve. He remembers the nervous feeling in his gut when they were talking about the classified medical facility for Steve. Project Rebirth, after all, was originally a military project. He should've been thinking about this, he realized. He should've been planning and protecting Steve better. God. He’d been so focused on whet this meant for his career, he hadn’t even considered this. He should've...

"Bucky!" Steve is leaning close, neck stretched at an odd angle so he can look straight into Bucky's eyes. "Bucky. It's okay. You need to breathe."

He sucks in a breath, long and dry over his throat and his head clears a little. "I'll talk to Tony. We'll get a lawyer. They can't take you."

Steve is shaking his head. "They're not going to take me, Buck. They’re not the bad guys. It’s SHIELD.”

Of course Steve doesn’t see it. Bucky adores Steve with every fiber of his being. Steve is good. Steve believes in people. Steve believes good wins out. Steve sees the world in steady lines and thinks the light always chases out the dark. He's served his country and, while he knows evil exists, he believes the good guys are the good guys. 

It's not like Bucky has had a lifetime of experience with the seedy underbelly of the world either. He just understands corruption better, he thinks. He's seen how the pursuit of money and fame makes people do crazy things. And, what Steve is now, that is what legends are made out of. SHIELD would be crazy not to try to assert their control. 

Bucky won't be able to convince Steve of that tonight, though. So he smiles. "They won't," he agrees, like a promise. 

###  _Steve_

“You’re not in trouble,” says Director Pierce serenely when they’ve all sat down at the long conference table that stretches along a floor to ceiling window on one of the middle floors of Stark Tower. It has the particular smell that all offices and conference rooms have, disinfectant and chemical room freshener and carpet. 

Steve is on one side of the table, flanked by Stark and Bucky and a phalanx of lawyers that Stark had brought. He's facing the windows here, looking out over Manhattan and the river. 

Alexander Pierce is on the other side, Maria on his left and a balding man that had been introduced as Phil Coulson from SHIELD on his right. Sharon Carter is next to Maria. She had smiled at Steve when she’d sat down, warm and kind. 

“In my experience, sir,” Steve says, ignoring the tickle of sweat at the back of his neck. He’d seen the way Pierce had eyed up his new dimensions as soon as he entered the room. “The brass doesn’t show up to say a job well done.”

Pierce sits back, folds his arms over his chest. “Rogers, part of your job is flying under the radar, blending in. You just put your face on the front page of every news source in America. You think you can go back to the field now? Your team is all about discreet actions and now everyone from Australia to Kazakistan is going to recognize your ugly mug.”

Steve straightens. “I didn’t set out to do that, sir.” He puts his hands flat on the table, swallows. "There was someone in trouble and I was there... I was in a position to help and I couldn't ignore that."

"And that's exactly why we have a new job for you." Pierce gestures with one hand. "Mr. Coulson, here, is the head of public outreach for SHIELD. You, Captain Rogers, are going to work for him."

"Work for him?" Steve repeats, feeling a bit dumbstruck.

"Captain Rogers," Coulson says, briskly. “SHIELD recruitment has been down almost 35% since Chitauri attacked New York. Funding from Congress is down almost 42%. People don't trust us like they used to."

Steve folds his arms and peers down his nose, trying to communicate his utter lack of surprise.

Pierce gets to his feet. "We need to restore faith in SHIELD. We need to inspire people. What you did in New York... my seven year old grandson is calling me up wanting to see if I can get him 'Captain America's' phone number. People like you. You inspire people. We want to tap into that. We want to recruit the best of the best and you can help us do that." Pierce leans over the table, planting both hands so that he's almost looming over Steve. "What do you say, Captain Rogers?"

Somehow, Steve doesn't think he has much of a choice. Steve really doesn’t like Pierce much. “When do I start?” he asks. 

“We want to capitalize on this quickly,” Pierce tells him. “Who knows how long people will be interested in you.”

Steve makes a face when he’s not looking. 

“We’re going to play up the Captain America angle... our focus groups say that plays really well across all markets. We have a couple ideas for a uniform but I think the crowning jewel is what our R&D department sent over.” Pierce pulls out what looks to be a large cymbal carrying case and hands it to Steve. “Open it.”

Steve is already dreading whatever is inside. He unzips the black nylon and pulls out a large disc, painted red, white and blue with a star right in the middle. “What is it?”

“It’s a shield,” Coulson says, sounding a little giddy. “Get it? SHIELD? It’s testing really well: an easily recognizable and identifiable symbol that harkens to the flag and also your daring rescue. Sleek, right?”

Steve remembers the heft of the huge manhole cover as he charged across the intersection. He spins this new shield his hands, feeling the balance. “This is a lot lighter. What’s it made out of?”

“It’s vibranium. SHIELD has a very limited supply that it purchased from Wakanda back in the 1970s. I thought it was a nice touch.” Pierce looks way too pleased with himself and Steve resists the urge to pull another face.

He flips the shield again in his hands. It has good balance at least, he decides. Maybe it’ll come in useful if someone decides to throw rotten fruit at him while he’s doing his dancing monkey routine for SHIELD.

###  _Steve_

"You know, when I joined SHIELD, I never envisioned this." Steve tugs at the stiff fabric of his dress uniform. It feels like there's a thick pancake of make up on his face, making him hot and sweaty under the studio lights. 

"You and me both, pal," one of his handlers tells him - a guy assigned by Pierce named Jasper Sitwell. "Just be charming. You can be charming right?"

Steve grimaces. "Not according to my husband." 

"You have your talking points?"

The index card in Steve's hands has been folded and refolded so many times that the middle is starting to wear to softness, blurring the black neat penmanship covering it. Steve hold it up. "Right here."

"Just stick to those. US good. Terrorists bad. Joining SHIELD and/or the military is best way to serve your country. Yada yada. Now, put on the smile. You're almost up." Sitwell steps back and Steve plasters on the smile he wore for all his graduation photos. 

On the other side of the wooden set, he can hear the host's chipper voice. "Next up, we have one of New York's finest heroes! His name is Steve Rogers - but you may know him better as Captain America!"

Steve steps out into the blinding lights and thinks how much he hates this all.

It doesn't stop though; the entire thing is like a wild carousel that is equal parts exhilarating and nauseating but it doesn't end. They've booked Steve on what feels like a dozen New York shows.

Steve does his best to play a good show pony. He lets his handlers brush his hair and pat his face and he waves politely as they usher him out onto soundstage after soundstage. He goes home at night and curls around Bucky and complains about the hot lights and how the craft services forget that he needs much bigger meals than a normal person. 

Bucky hums sympathetically in all of the right places - but Steve can still tell that his mind is faraway, focused like a laser on the problem ahead of him. His papers are spread constantly over their kitchen table and when Steve comes in late, he finds him curled up with Toby on the couch, still pouring over his laptop. 

It pains Steve to admit but there's not a lot he can do to help Bucky with this. There isn't a tactical assault to be analyzed and executed - there is no castle to storm. Steve doesn't do well in situations that can't be solved by his fists, an inspiring speech, or a well-timed surprise attack - Bucky says it's part of his charm. 

Steve's not shy to admit he doesn't understand molecular biology or academia. Bucky has always been better at science and politics than Steve. It is one of the things Steve loves about him. 

"You're the brains and I'm the brawn," he used to tell Bucky, back when he was glorying in his newfound bulk during Ranger school and Bucky had taken to scribbling chemical compounds on their walls as he worked on his thesis. 

Bucky had peered at him over the rims of his glasses before rolling his eyes.

It's not that Steve doesn't think he's smart - he knows he's smart. He's good at language and tactics - all of the things that make him a good soldier. But he's not Bucky.

He's been so proud over these last years to see Bucky's career flourish, to see him recognized by his peers and superiors for his talent and ideas. Bucky has always been meant for something important, Steve has known that for as long as they’ve been together. To think that all of that could be snatched away from Bucky over a choice Bucky made to save _him_ makes Steve feel sick.

So Steve can't help with the science. He can't figure out which compound worked best or whatever Bucky has been bent over his microscope staring at for the last few days. 

This is what he knows, though, the NIH and the FDA may be the gods in Bucky's world - but in Steve's world, the Pentagon brass has the final say and the deep pockets to back it up. If Bucky's school kicks him out, if the FDA tries to sideline his research, Bucky will need other options and Steve’s going to do his best to see that he gets them. He knows that there's a chance that someone at the DoD could take interest in his work: someone with the power to give Bucky a new career. There are labs and scientists at the Pentagon - Steve's seen them. Maybe that would be enough for Bucky. 

Of course, it wouldn't be teaching and students and violins playing at cocktail hours, but it would be equipment and microscopes and, and... whatever else it is that scientists use in their pursuit of research.

So Steve pastes a smile on his face. He answers bland questions about his exercise routine and talks about how the army gave him purpose after his mom died. 

It's not all terrible - he gets to do some visits to hospitals. He likes visiting the kids: he sees himself in the tiny children propped up in hospital beds, Bucky in the brave siblings, and his mom in the nurses and worried parents. He finishes his first sting of appearances and hopes that is that - that they'll let him be now.

No such luck. 

The first shows go _so_ well that he gets signed up for more and Steve makes himself nod and grin and put his dress uniform back on. _For Bucky_ , he tells himself firmly. 

When he's shaking hands at some fundraiser and small time politicians are posing with him left and right, he grits his teeth and pictures Bucky's face when he makes a breakthrough in the labs and the amazing sex that always follows.

When he's scheduled to do a whistle stop tour that will start in Los Angeles and take him across small town America to do fundraisers and morning shows (a trip that will take him away from Bucky's side for the longest stint of time since Venezuela), he says "yessir" and thinks of Bucky getting to do what he loves most in the world.

Bucky sacrificed all of that for him - so Steve can do no less.

So, Steve packs a bag (his dress uniform and all his medals carefully pressed in a dry cleaning bag), kisses Bucky goodbye, and heads off for a different kind of war.

###  _Bucky_

It's his second day without Steve when the call comes and Bucky is honestly grateful for the interruption. Steve and he have been living out of each other's pockets for weeks - since Steve landed in that med evac flight, pale and halfway dead. Bucky has been able to wake up every morning and check Steve's pulse, watch his chest expand with oxygen. He's been able to hold Steve tight and assure himself that everything is okay.

Since Steve left, first to D.C. for more meetings at SHIELD and then to California for talk shows, Bucky has felt the distance like a hook in his gut, the tension pulled taut within him as Steve roams further and further away. No matter how many times he tells himself that Steve will be fine, he can't quite convince his brain to stop worrying.

What if the serum finally starts breaking down while Steve is out there alone?

Stark had rolled his eyes at him when Bucky had expressed that thought out loud. "He's not alone, Barnes," he'd said. "He's with about 20 of America's finest. One of them will be able to tell if he's feeling a little peckish, I assure you."

Bucky knows it's silly. A large portion of their married life has been spent apart with Steve in life threatening situations that Bucky had no control over. This should be old hat by now. 

Now, at least, Steve is just a text away and Bucky has his daily schedule printed out and laying on his bedside table. He can text him any time for an update or call one of the handlers if he can't reach Steve right away. He's not gone, he tells himself sternly as he lays in their empty bed with Toby snuffling beside him. He is not faraway. He is not lost.

Before this offer from SHIELD, Bucky knows he'd been suffocating Steve. He'd seen it on his husband's face, in the way his eyes pinched and wandered to the window. This is good for Steve. This is good for them. 

So, when his phone rings and the name of one of his post doc's flashes up on the screen, Bucky snatches it up gratefully. He can focus on other things besides Steve, he tells himself. "Hello? Sherrene?" he says.

"Dr. Barnes?" She sounds rushed, voice higher than Bucky remembers. "Oh thank god. I was... there are men here. At the lab. They don't have a warrant but they're asking for access and..."

Bucky's already grabbing his coat and his keys. If he takes Stark's helicopter, he can be there in less than a couple hours. "Stall them. Can you do that? Get them coffee and danishes or whatever. Tell them I'm on my way. Don't let them take anything."

He's known this was coming. Everyone had been focused on Steve but Bucky had known eventually the right people would connect the right dots and they'd show up at his lab, looking for answers. He owes it to his lab, to his students, to his school, to be there when it happens. 

The campus feels smaller and dimmer somehow, even though the sun is bright with the promise of coming warmth, he thinks as he charges up the cement path toward his lab. This place has been magical to him for so long - the place where all his dreams were coming true. This had been his shrine, his home, his temple. Now, the course of his life has shifted and the buildings are just buildings. 

He takes the steps two at a time and pushes through the swinging doors and into the bright space of his lab. Sherrene is near the door and she meets his gaze with wide, scared eyes, her hands clasped together in front of her like she's praying. The filing cabinets on the far side are all gaping open, manila folders spilling out. He can see stacks of hard drives on the lab tables and suited men are flipping through binders of notes and test results. Lab equipment has been loaded on trolleys. They're taking everything.

Bucky is desperately glad that he’d moved the last samples of RB-32557 to Tony’s labs just a couple days ago. 

"Gentlemen," he says, coming in and setting his laptop case on an empty spot of a lab table. He's in jeans and a t-shirt and he can feel hair stringing out of the sloppy bun he had thrown it into on the helicopter. "I'm Dr. Barnes, can I ask who gave you authorization to do this?"

A tall thin man who seems vaguely familiar steps forward, leather badge holder in his hand. He's older, head shaved in that tight neat style of a man going bald. "James Barnes?" he asks. 

"Yes," Bucky confirms and a strange feeling niggles at his chest. He thought this would be the FDA, after his research - maybe even the white collar division of the FBI. He thought it would be pencil pushers and fellow scientists that he could reason with, but this... Bucky recognizes the way the man holds his shoulders, the way he strides across the lab, the way his coat is carefully cut to hide a weapon. These guys are military - elite military - and Bucky is in way over his head.

He clears his throat. "What agency are you with?" he tries. He needs to call Tony, he thinks. Tony will be able to help straighten this out. 

"Dr. Barnes, we're going to need you to come with us," the man says and his voice is crisp and clean, like he's snapping on leather gloves.

"Am I under arrest?" Bucky steps back, reaching into his pocket for his phone.

The man smiles and it does nothing to relieve the heavy seriousness of his eyebrows. "Of course not. We just have some questions."

"We can go to my office," Bucky swallows, glances at Sherrene. "I'm sure I'll be able to..." He has his phone in his hand, unlocking it and trying to find Tony's number without looking down.

"I apologize, Dr. Barnes," the suited man says, reaching forward, quick like a snake. His long pale fingers close over Bucky's phone, pulling it away with a quick yank. "We can't allow you to make any calls until you've answered our questions. I have to say... I thought we were going to have to come to New York to get you. Thank you for coming here and making our job easier."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Bucky snaps. "You can't do this. This isn't legal. Sherrene..." He turns and sees her being escorted out the doors by two other men - she's looking back over her shoulder at him and Bucky sees the panic. He sucks in a breath and turns back around. 

“It’s okay, Dr. Barnes,” someone says from behind. 

Bucky turns.

Brock Rumlow is standing there, smiling that half crooked grin of his as he closes the door behind Sherrene. “Remember me?”

In any other situation, Bucky would’ve taken the time to be insulted. Of course, he remembered him - even if Brock rarely came to the team barbecues that Steve or someone else in the Strike division hosted. Bucky rarely forgot a face. Also, Brock wasn’t someone Bucky would forget anyway - and not in the good way. Brock had a habit of drinking too much and getting way too upset over some small thing that would lead to him storming from the gathering in a huff. 

Steve didn’t talk about him much but his mouth would go flat whenever he came up, which was enough for Bucky to be able tell that his husband didn’t like the man.

If Rumlow is here though, it meant that this isn’t just some rogue group, some shadowy agency that’ll disappear him from the face of the earth. This is SHIELD. Brock may not be a good guy but Steve has never said anything to indicate he’s anything but a professional in the field. Maybe this is all okay?

No. Something is still fishy. 

Bucky takes a step back, glancing toward the doors that Sherrene had just left through. Brock or no, Bucky would be more comfortable with an audience. There would be people in the hallway, students and other professors. If he could just get there, he could cause a commotion. They wouldn't drag him out of here screaming. Would they?

“What’s this about, Brock?” he tries, taking a single step closer toward Brock and the door. “Where’s Steve?”

“This will be easier if you just cooperate, Bucky,” Rumlow says and Bucky bristles at the over familiar use of his nickname. His eyes are cold. Why has Bucky never noticed before how cold his eyes are?

Bucky holds up his phone, sliding one foot toward the door as he does. “I will. Just let me call Steve first.”

That's when he feels a sharp pang in the side of his neck, deep and quick, and he turns to see another man stepping away, a hypodermic in his fingers. He sways.

Strong arms grab him from behind and Bucky finds himself staring up at Brock’s face. 

“Sorry, buddy,” Rumlow says. “But your precious husband can’t know about this.”

The world goes woozy, feathering out at the edges and Bucky thinks, _Steve_ , desperately across all the distance and space, like a prayer or a plea, before the world goes dark around him.


End file.
